No new cases of COVID-19 were reported by Manitoba’s provincial government April 28.
The total number of cases in the province remains at 272. Of those, 209 people are listed as recovered and there are 57 active cases. Six people have died from the novel coronavirus and seven people are currently in hospital, two of them in intensive care.
The number of cases in the Northern Regional Health Authority remains at three.
Premier Brian Pallister announced April 28 that all Manitobans with symptoms such as a cough, runny nose, sore throat and/or fever are now eligible to be tested for COVId-19.
“With increased levels of tracking, testing and isolation, we will have a better understanding of how we are doing as a province in flattening the COVID curve,” the premier said in a news release. “This is crucial as we carefully and slowly work toward expanding services safely in the coming weeks and months.”
The private company Dynacare will be increasing the amount of testing it does alongside Manitoba’s Cadham Provincial Laboroatry as the province seeks to ramp up to being able to provide up to 3,000 tests per day before the end of summer.
Bob Moroz, president of the Manitoba Association of Health care Professionals (MAHCP), which represents Shared Health laboratory technologists and assistants across the province, said the union asked last week if the province was planning to privatize COVID-19 testing and received a response this morning that gave no indication that the announcement of outsourcing some testing to Dynacare was coming.
“Our question is, why Dynacare and not Shared Health when we have a fully functioning public laboratory system?” said Moroz in an emailed statement. “MAHCP believes the Manitoba government is taking yet another opportunity to privatize services when they should be looking at expanding and utilizing capacity in our public labs.”
Chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said the continuing low numbers of the coronavirus in Manitoba means some non-essential businesses in the province could be allowed to reopen soon.
“W’ere now looking to be able to loosen some of our restrictions,” he said.
Roussin expects that with expanded testing criteria, the proportion of positive tests, currently at about 1.5 per cent, will likely decrease.
“It’s very unlikely we’ve missed a huge number of cases out there,” he said, noting that all symptomatic patients in hospitals have been tested for a number of weeks now.
An announcement about the plan to gradually reopen the economy is expected to be delivered tomorrow, Roussin said.
