ICU patient numbers reach 4th wave high, 7 more COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba on Tuesday

The number of patients in intensive care units in Manitoba has reached the highest level since the third wave crisis that led to people being shipped out of the province for critical care.

The number of COVID-19 patients in Manitoba intensive care units dropped two to 54 on Tuesday, but the total number of all patients in ICUs jumped to 114 — 11 more than on Monday — the provincial government's online dashboard says.

Although the number of patients with the coronavirus in ICUs has crept up over the past few weeks, it has remained relatively stable and below the highs of other pandemic waves, said Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, a St. Boniface Hospital ICU physician.

"It's fair to say we're barely coping," he said.

"We're managing to care for the patients who present with COVID. But let's not fool ourselves. We're managing to care for these patients at the expense of thousands of other patients by having routine or even urgent type care denied.

There are now 737 COVID-19 patients in hospital, an increase of two on what was a record-setting number on Monday. That means more than half of the roughly 1,300 hospital patients in Manitoba have COVID-19.

At the end of the day on Monday, there were 1,433 beds across the Manitoba health system, of which 138 were not occupied, a spokesperson for Shared Health said in a statement Tuesday.

Although hospital numbers have yet to peak in Manitoba, and the health system remains under considerable strain, Jacobsohn says there are signs this wave of the pandemic is reaching a plateau. The flow of COVID-19 patients into ICUs has stayed fairly consistent, around four to five per day.

"It looks like it's going to probably start fizzling out," he said.

Manitoba's death toll since the start of the pandemic is now 1,569.

The province's five-day test-positivity rate dropped slightly to 30.1 per cent, from 30.4  per cent on Monday.

Another 491 cases have been confirmed by PCR testing and 32,013 cases are currently listed as active, although this significantly undercounts the true number of cases in the province due to restricted access to testing.

A total of 121,131 cases have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic.

Of the new cases announced on Monday, 234 are in the Winnipeg health region, 92 are in the Northern Health region, 68 are in Prairie Mountain Health, 52 are in Southern Health and 45 are in the Interlake-Eastern health region.

Labs completed 1,716 COVID-19 tests on Monday.

Reported school-related cases increased by 348 since they were last updated on Thursday.

Since classes resumed on Sept. 7, there have been a total of 5,881 reported cases in schools — 4,266 among students and 1,615 among staff.

As of Tuesday, 85.7 per cent of eligible Manitobans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 79.7 per cent had two doses, and 40.4 per cent had received a booster shot, provincial data says.