Manitoba hits 3rd straight day with COVID-19 cases below 200, reporting 116 and 2 deaths

Manitoba public health officials announced 116 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths on Tuesday.

One death is amanin his 90s from the Winnipeg health region, linked to the B.1.1.7 variant of concern, the province said in a news release. The other is a woman in her 90s from the Southern Healthregion, linked to an unspecified variant of concern and the outbreak at Carman Memorial Hospital.

The number of Manitobans who have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began is now 1,104.That includes 114 linked to more contagious variants.

Of the latest cases, 55 are in theWinnipeg health region, 28 in theSouthern Healthregion,23 in the Northern Health Region,seven in the Prairie Mountain Health region and threein the Interlake-Eastern health region.

Tuesday's total a drop from Monday's 124 is the third consecutive day the daily numbers have been below 200. It's also the lowest daily caseload since April 19, when there were 108.

The province's new seven-day average daily case count is now 206. The pandemic peak, which came during the third wave in Manitoba, was 482 on May 22.

Another 279 cases involving more contagious coronavirus variants have also been identified, theprovince's data dashboardsays. Of those, 189 are the B.1.1.7 strain while the rest remain unspecified.

Test positivity down

The current five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate is 10.6 per cent provincially (down from 10.7 on Monday) and 9.9 per cent in Winnipeg (down from 10.2).

This is the first time the Winnipeg test positivity is below 10 since it was 9.2 on May 5.

There are 290 COVID-19 patients in hospital, of which87 areinintensive care. There are 63 being treated in Manitoba ICUs and24 outside the province:23 in Ontario and one in Alberta.

The province also announced that an outbreak at Winnipeg's Grace Hospital, Unit 3 South, is now over.

Provincial officials have said that in order for the current public health orders to be loosened, certain vaccinations targets must be met by specific summer holidays.

If 70 per cent of all Manitobans age12 and older havereceived their first vaccine dose and 25 per cent have received their second dose by Canada Day, most businesses, services and facilities can open at 25 per cent capacity.

As of Tuesday, there had been 1,060,597 vaccine doses administered in the province. The percentage who'd received a first dose was 69.7 while the percentage with asecond dose was 18.4.