9 deaths, 45 new COVID-19 hospitalizations in Manitoba on Thursday

Another nine people have died due to COVID-19 in Manitoba, with an additional 45 cases in hospital Thursday, the provincial coronavirus data dashboard says.

There are now 499 people in Manitoba hospitals who have COVID-19.

One more patient was admitted to an intensive care unit, bringing the total number of COVID-19 patients in ICU to 47.

There are a total of 102 ICU patients in Manitoba on Thursday, including non-COVID patients, which is 30 more than the pre-pandemic baseline ICU capacity of 72.

Manitoba added 1,228 new cases to its total, and Manitoba's test positivity dropped to 44.9 per cent, from 47.2 per cent on Wednesday. However, health officials have said the province's daily case numbers significantly undercount the true number of cases, because many positive cases are not reported.

The province only counts positive PCR tests but has severely restricted access to them, with most symptomatic people only doing self-administered rapid antigen tests. The province does not track RAT results.

There are 663 new reported cases in the Winnipeg health region, 163 in the Northern Health Region, 149 in Prairie Mountain, 127 in Southern Health and 126 in Interlake-Eastern.

Labs completed a total of 2,965 PCR tests on Wednesday. 

The latest updated numbers come one day after Dr. Jazz Atwal said it was "highly likely" every person in Manitoba would be exposed to the virus in the coming weeks, due to the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant.

There are now 36,087 cases listed as active in the province, with 69,102 recovered. The nine deaths announced Thursday bring Manitoba's toll to 1,438.

Details about those deaths will be included in a bulletin on Friday.

The total number of COVID-19 cases confirmed by PCR tests is now 106,627.

As of Thursday, 84.8 per cent of eligible Manitobans had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 78.1 per cent had two doses and 32.6 per cent had three, the provincial vaccine dashboard says.