Three new COVID-19 deaths, 151 new cases in Manitoba Saturday

WINNIPEG — The province announced three new deaths linked to COVID-19 on Saturday, all of which tied to the B.1.1.7 variant, otherwise known as the Alpha variant.

The deaths include a woman in her 50s from the Winnipeg area, a man in his 60s also from Winnipeg, connected to an outbreak at the Health Sciences Centre WRS3 unit, and a man in his 70s from the Southern Health Region linked to an outbreak at the Bethesda Regional Health Centre medical unit.

This pushes Manitoba's COVID-19 death toll to 1,118.

Another 151 COVID cases were also announced Saturday, however, 11 previously announced cases were removed due to a data correction.

This brings Manitoba’s total number of COVID-19 cases to 55,238.

Winnipeg had 61 of the new cases and the five-day test positivity rate is 7.4 per cent.

The Northern Health Region had 33 cases, followed closely by the Southern Health Region with 32, 14 came from the Interlake-Eastern Health Region and 11 are from the Prairie Mountain Health Region.

Manitoba's five-day test positivty rate 8.3 per cent.

There are currently 2,307 active COVID-19 cases in the province and 51,813 people have recovered from the virus.

On the variant front, there 7,783 cases that have been unspecified, while the Alpha variant has 6,302 cases.

There has been 195 cases of P.1, 133 B.1.617.2, 15 B.1.617.1 and nine B.1.617, as well as 63 cases of B.1.351.

Manitoba has had 14,500 cases of COVID-19 variants and 1,420 of those cases are active.

There are 244 Manitobans who are in hospital either in the province or in neighbouring provinces.

Of those 244, 134 are in Manitoba hospitals with active COVID-19, 35 of which are in ICU.

Another 92 are no longer infectious but still require care, including 23 in intensive care.

There are 18 Manitobans in intensive care units outside of Manitoba, 17 in Ontario and one in Alberta, and 31 previously transported patients have been returned to the province.

On Friday, 1,853 tests were performed, bringing the total to 813,473 since February 2020.