Manitoba passed a significant milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic April 17 with the number of people listed as recovered surpassing the number of active cases in the province.
No new cases were reported Friday and there are now 132 people listed as recovered compared to 113 active cases.
The total number of cases remains at 250 and there are eight people hospitalized for novel coronavirus infections, four of them in intensive care. Five Manitobans have died from the virus.
“The rate of growth of the infections is being surpassed by the rate of recovery,” said Manitoba’s chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin, calling that a reason for cautious optimism, but not enough for Manitobans to relax their precautions. “This doesn’t mean our risk is reduced. The virus is still in Manitoba.”
The number of positive tests in the Northern Regional Health Authority remains at three.
There are not yet any highway checkpoints for enforcement of the ban on most travel into Northern Manitoba and communities without all-weather road access that took effect April 17 and will last at least two weeks.
“We don’t have anything specifically in place right now but that’s certainly an option,” Roussin said. "We have to protect those most at risk and certainly the remote and isolated communities are among those.”
Asked if people returning to the north from other provinces should self-isolate for 14 days where they first enter Manitoba or proceed to their home community, Roussin said they can return home before isolating.
“If you are a resident of the north the order we issued yesterday doesn’t apply to you.It’s usually allowed to go to your final destination,” he said, noting that any non-essential travel within the province or beyond its boundaries should be cancelled or postponed at this time. Roussin said the R-nought number, a theoretical number to measure how many other people are infected by one case of COVID-19, is believed to be about 2.5 or 2.6 right now but needs to be below one for the spread of the virus to stop.
“Once you have the R-value under one, the epidemic goes away,” Roussin said.
He said the infection rate for close contacts of known cases is about nine per cent in Manitoba.
Despite positive signs, the message from the public health officer was that pandemic precautions need to continue.
“The best way to protect yourself is to stay home,” he said, adding that other precautions such as frequent hand washing, covering coughs and sneezes and maintaining physical distancing when you have to go out for essentials. “The recent numbers in Manitoba are showing that we were never helpless against this virus.”
Manitoba chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa said Manitoba had the advantage of learning from other regions where the pandemic arrived earlier.
“We are in a very different place in this fight than other jurisdictions,” she said.
“We are up to six weeks behind in our trajectory compared to some other provinces,” Roussin said.
The Public Health agency of Canada said there are 30,670 COVID-19 cases in Canada and 1,250 people have died from their infections.
