42 new COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths reported in Manitoba on Tuesday

There are 42new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba on Tuesday, the province's online dashboard says, and twomore deaths from the illness were reported.

Of the new cases, 17 were reported in the Southern Health region, 16 in the Winnipeg health region, four in the Prairie Mountain Health region, three in the Northern Health Region and two in the Interlake-Eastern health region.

The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 is now 1,211, including205 linked to more contagious coronavirus variants.

The online data shows that the two deaths reported Tuesday were people from the Southern Health region whose deathsarelinked to an unspecified variant of concern.

The Manitoba government no longer holds news conferences or sends news releases on Tuesdays to update case numbers and death statistics, although some figures areavailable online. News releases are sent on Mondays and Thursdays.

Take delta variant seriously: virologist

There are currently 613 active cases of COVID-19, and a total of 58,509 people have recovered from the illness since the start of the pandemic.

There are 82 COVID-19 patients in Manitoba hospitals, up from 77 on Monday: 45 people with active symptoms and 37 COVID-19 patients whoare no longer infectious.

Among the active cases, 73 per cent were unvaccinated, nine per cent were only partly vaccinated and 18 per cent are fully vaccinated, the province's dashboard says.

There are 19 people inintensive care, unchanged from the day before, including 13active COVID-19cases and six who are no longer infectious but continue to require critical care.

Among active cases in ICU, 85 per cent are unvaccinated and 15 per cent are partly vaccinated.

The total number of people in Manitoba ICUs remains well above the province's pre-pandemic capacity of 72.

As of Tuesday, there were 88 people (both COVID-19 and non-COVID patients) in intensive care, a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email.

These numbers are concerning to Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist and Canada Research Chair in emerging viruses,especially considering the state of hospitals in other provinces, where the highly contagious delta variant is spreading like wildfire.

"Watching Alberta and Saskatchewan,I don't think there is any greater message we could have than what's going on there right now. All we can do is continue to basically emphatically ask people to takedeltavery seriously and get people on side with the vaccination message," he said on CBC Manitoba's Up To Speed on Tuesday.

Left unchecked, the virus could mutate into a strain that's vaccine-resistant, Kindrachuk says. There are fewer opportunities for the virus to replicate when more people are vaccinated.

Number of school cases nearly doubles to 133

The province's five-day test positivity rate is 2.8 per cent on Tuesday, up from 2.7 on Monday.

No information about the Winnipeg test positivity rate is provided on the COVID-19 data site. That rate was 1.2 per cent on Monday, the last time it was updated.

On Monday, 1,921 COVID-19 tests were done.

There are 166 moreCOVID-19 cases nowlinked tomore infectious coronavirus variants since Saturday, the last time the province updated its online data on those cases.

None of those cases have been classified at this time.

The province's online vaccine data dashboard says 80.3per cent of eligible Manitobans now have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 84.8 per cent now have at least one dose.

Just over 1,300 more shots are scheduled for Tuesday.

Another 63COVID-19 cases have now been reported in schools, nearly doubling the 70 reported last Thursday, when the dashboard with school case numbers was last updated.

There have now been 133cases in total since Sept. 7. Of those, 119 arestudentsand 14 areschool staff.

Sixty-three different schools have hadat least one COVID-19 case so far this school year, up from46 as of last Thursday.