The number of Manitobans in hospital with COVID-19 continues to rise, as does the number of people with infections who have died but the number admitted to intensive care remains fairly stable.
716 patients in hospital had COVID-19 as of Jan. 24 and there were 49 Manitobans with the virus in intensive care. The total number of deaths since the pandemic began reached 1,515 n Monday, up 52 from where it was a week earlier.
The provincial government said the number of new hospitalizations in the week ending Jan. 20 was down less than one per cent from the previous week, while the number of new intensive care cases went up 8.1 per cent from the week before.
The five-day test positivity rate in the province is 33.3 per cent and there were 536 confirmed new cases on Monday and nearly 76,000 active cases provincewide, though those numbers are both underestimates because of limited PCR testing eligibility.
There were 56 northern residents with COVID-19 in hospital Jan. 24, three of them in intensive care, and 82 new confirmed cases on Monday as well as over 2,900 active cases in the region, though actual numbers are much higher.
All 15 northern health districts have active cases as of Monday and two-thirds of them have more than 100 cases, including Thompson/Mystery Lake, which has 236.
A COVID-19 outbreak declared at Northern Spirit Manor personal care home after Christmas has been declared over. The outbreak consisted of eight total infections as of Jan. 24, all but one of which affected staff. Of those, three cases were listed as active, four as recovered and one as having resulted i n a death.
There are still multiple current outbreaks in the north, including the one at Thompson General Hospital’s obstetrics and neonatal unit that affected six staff members, four of whom have recovered from their infections. The outbreak declared last week at Gillam Hospital affects only one staff member so far and that case is still considered active.
There was also an outbreak declared at Nisichawayasihk Personal Care Home on Jan. 17 but the provincial COVID-19 website does not provide details about how many people that outbreak affects.
The number of Manitobans with three doses of COVID-19 vaccine has risen to 36 per cent but the overall percentage of Manitobans aged five and up who are fully vaccinated (having received two or three doses) remains at 78 per cent, while those percentage of unvaccinated people is still at 15 percent. Nearly 55 per cent of children aged five to 11 have received their first doses of vaccine and some are now eligible for second doses if they received their first shot eight weeks ago or longer.
82 per cent of current COVID-19 infections affect people with either two (65 per cent) or three (17 per cent) doses of vaccine. 72 per cent of people with COVID infections in hospital have received two (53 per cent) or three (19 per cent) vaccine doses, while 24 per cent have received zero. 43 per cent of COVID patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, while 40 per cent have received two doses and 13 per cent have gotten three.
41 per cent of people with COVID-19 who died over the past six weeks had two doses of vaccine, while 31 per cent had no doses and 21 per cent had three doses.
