Northern Manitoba accounted for close to half of the province’s daily COVID-19 cases April 7, with 49 newly lab-confirmed infections reported.
For Manitoba as a whole, there were 109 new positive tests reported on Wednesday, though two previously reported cases were removed from the provincial total for a net daily increase of 107. Fifty-one of the cases were in Winnipeg, while there were four in the Prairie Mountain health region, three in the Interlake-Eastern health region and two in the southern health region.
The Island Lake health district, which has had the most COVID-19 cases of any northern health district, continues to be the hardest hit, reporting 28 new infections. There were also nine new cases in the Grand Rapids/Misipawistik/Mosakahiken/Moose Lake/Easterville/Chemawawin district and five in the Bunibonibee/Oxford House/Manto Sipi/God’s River/God’s Lake health district and two in the Pukatawagan/Mathias Colomb district. Thompson/Mystery Lake was one of a handful of health districts to have one case added to their totals.
The number of Manitobans in hospital remained the same as the previous day April 7, at 140, 61 of whom have active cases. The number of active cases in intensive care remained at 14 but there are 18 Manitobans who are no longer considered infectious in ICU, up two from April 6. The number of hospitalized northerners went up by one to 30, 22 of whom are still considered infectious. There are two more northerners in intensive care than yesterday, including seven with active infections and four who are no longer considered infectious.
Twenty-two more samples from COVID-positive patients have been determined to have been caused by variants of concern. Twenty-one of these samples were from Winnipeg and one is from the Prairie Mountain health region. There have now ben 261 cases involving the B.1.1.7 or United Kingdom variant in Manitoba, as well as 20 of the B.1.351 or South Africa variant and 18 cases that screened positive for being one of the variants but have not been categorized, for a total of 299 variant cases.
The five-day test positivity rate dropped back below five per cent on Wednesday, to 4.8 per cent provincially.
