Manitoba reported three more deaths linked to COVID-19 and 70 new cases of the illness on Wednesday.

One of the deaths was a woman in her 70s who was moved to a hospital in Ontario for critical care on June 4, a Shared Health spokesperson said.

The woman is the 12th intensive care patient to die after being moved out of Manitoba to free up space in the province's strained hospitals. That death will be added to Manitoba's total in the coming days.

Earlier Wednesday, the province announced two other deaths linked to COVID-19 in its daily news release: a man in his 30s from the Interlake-Eastern health region and a woman in her 60s from the Winnipeg health region. The latest deaths bring Manitoba's total linked to the illness to 1,141.

The man's death was linked to a variant still listed as unspecified, while the woman's was connected to the B.1.1.7 alpha variant first found in the U.K., the release said.

Of the new COVID-19 cases reported on Wednesday, the Winnipeg health region has 29 new cases, the Northern Health Region has 20, the Southern Health region has 12, the Interlake-Eastern health region has seven and the Prairie Mountain Health region has two, the release said.

Manitoba's five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate sank slightly to 6.2 per cent, the release said, down from 6.3 on Tuesday. Winnipeg's decreased to 5.6 per cent from 5.8 per cent.

There are now 173 Manitobans in hospital after getting COVID-19, the release said, a drop of eight since Tuesday. That includes 55 people in critical care, with 46 in Manitoba and nine in Ontario hospitals. Of those 55 patients, 17 are under age 40, the Shared Health spokesperson said.

Since Manitoba started moving some intensive care patients with COVID-19 out of province in May, 36 of those 57 people have since been sent back.

The province also reported 54 COVID-19 cases that have been linked to variants on its online variant dashboard. Of those cases, 50 have now been connected to the alpha variant and four are still listed as unspecified variants.

Manitoba health-care workers have now fully vaccinated 42.4 per cent of people age 12 and up. The proportion of eligible Manitobans with at least one dose is now 73.6 per cent, the province's online vaccine dashboard says.

Manitoba also set a new single-day record for vaccinations given on Tuesday, when it recorded 34,320 doses. The previous record was set on May 27, when 32,616 shots were given.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 56,167 Manitobans have tested positive for the illness. Of those people, 53,631 are considered recovered and 1,395 are still deemed active, the release said.

Because of the Canada Day holiday on Thursday, the province won't put out a COVID-19 bulletin or any online data updates that day. All those updates will resume as usual on Friday, the release said.