Two more people have died of COVID-19 in Manitoba, as the province announced 80 new cases on Monday, the same day new restrictions go into effect in Winnipeg and several surrounding communities.
The deaths of a man in his 70s and a woman in her 80s are both connected to the Heritage Lodge personal care home in Winnipeg.
This brings death toll in Manitoba to 42.
Of the 80 new cases, 51 are in the Winnipeg health region, 14 are in the Southern Health region, six are in the Prairie Mountain Health region, five are in the Northern Health region and four are in the Interlake-Eastern health region.
There are currently 28 people in hospital with COVID-19, six of them in intensive care.
The number of active cases is 1,743, while 1,597 have recovered from the virus. However, provincial officials have said there’s a backlog of cases that have not been followed up on, so the listed active case number is inflated.
The province completed 1,677 COVID-19 tests on Sunday, and the average total turnaround time for tests is now 60 hours, Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said.
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Manitoba’s chief public health officer will deliver the latest update on COVID-19 in the province on Monday, the same day new restrictions are set to go into effect in Winnipeg and surrounding communities.
Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. CBC News will live stream the news conference here.
The new restrictions include reducing the limit on gathering sizes to five people. Stand-alone bars and nightclubs, casinos, video lottery lounges, bingo halls and live entertainment facilities must close.
The provincial government made the announcement last week as Manitoba experienced the worst surge of new infections since the start of the pandemic, with the vast majority concentrated in Winnipeg.
Last week, the province had three consecutive days of record-breaking, triple-digit daily case counts, as well as the highest test-positivity rate — a rolling five-day average of the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive — of 5.2 per cent.
Over the weekend, those numbers started to decline, with daily counts of 75, 85 and 44 new confirmed cases on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
On Sunday, the test-positivity rate was 4.7.
The province also announced two more deaths related to COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths to 40.
