Manitoba posts lowest daily case tally in months with 35 COVID-19 cases Monday

Manitoba reports one death and 35 more COVID-19 cases on Monday, the lowest daily case count since Oct. 7, when the province reported 32 cases.

Of the new cases, 16 are in the Winnipeg health region, 16 are in the Northern Health Region, two are in the Interlake-Eastern health region and one is in the Southern Health region. There are no new cases in the Prairie Mountain Health region.

"These numbers are quite encouraging," Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussinsaid.

"But we're still at a precarious spot right now, with variants of concern now in Manitoba, and we're starting to reopen things. We just want to keep those numbers down so we don't ever have to go back."

There are no new confirmed cases of the B117 coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom, leaving the total number reported in Manitoba at five.

A man in his 60s from the Winnipeg health region died, the province said.

That brings the total number of deaths related to the novel coronavirus to896.

Manitoba's five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate a rolling average of the number of tests that come back positiveis up slightly to 3.9per cent from 3.7 per cent on the weekend, and Winnipeg's is up to three per cent from 2.7on Sunday.

There were 1,220 tests completed on Sunday, bringing the total number of lab tests completed since early February 2020 to 526,593.

There are now 184 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Manitoba, eight fewer than on Sunday, with 25 of them in intensive care, down one.

Data on race released

Data on race, ethnicity and Indigeneity of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 also was made public on Monday.

Black, Indigenous and othercommunities of colour in Manitoba are disproportionately affected by the pandemic because of their housing, occupations and health status, Roussin said.

"It's importantto note that this is not about the people in these communities makingbad choices or people not following public health guidance. We need to look at this datain the context of many factors," Roussin said.

WATCH | Why Manitoba isn't mulling region-specific restrictions:

Dr. Brent Roussin says region-specific pandemic restrictions off the table for now, but maybe not in future

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Duration 1:36

Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba's chief public health officer, says loosening rules for one health region but not another could just lead to more travel between the regions, but he's not ruling it out in the future.

The province is expected to release information on the further loosening of pandemic restrictions on Tuesday, but Roussin saidManitobans shouldn't expect regional exceptions to public health orders.

That's because when one region reopens, people will travel there to escape restrictions in their own health region, he says.

"Ifwe were able to put Prairie Mountain Health into, say, another level in the pandemic response system, have significant loosenings there compared to other parts of the province, we saw that earlier on in this wave, there will be increased mobility into that region, and that brings with itmore risk of the virus being reintroduced there," Roussin said.

Likewise, Manitobans shouldn't expect to be able to go to the movies this month.

"These are areas where people leave their homes for non-essential reasons to gather for extended periods of time indoors with people from outside their household. These are higher-risk settings," Roussin said.

There were 50 new COVID-19 cases and twomore deathsannounced on Sunday.

The first three cases of COVID-19 in the province were reported on March 12, 2020.The first death was announced March 27.

WATCH | Full news conference on COVID-19 | March 1, 2021:

Manitoba government daily briefing on coronavirus: March 1

4 years ago

Duration 36:03

Provincial officials give update on COVID-19 outbreak: Monday, March 1, 2021.