25 new COVID-19 cases, 1 death reported in Manitoba

There are 25 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Friday and one more person has died from the illness, the province's online dashboard says.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate dropped from 2.6 per cent on Thursday to 1.9 on Friday, the dashboard says.

There are now 71 COVID-19 patients in hospital in Manitoba, down from 75 Thursday. Eleven of those patients are still in intensive care, the dashboard says.

Manitoba has now reported 1,184 deaths linked to COVID-19.

The province also reported 43 newly identified cases of more contagious coronavirus variants on Friday.

The number of delta variant cases rose by two, the number of alpha variant cases rose by four and the number of unspecified variant cases is up 37.

The province's seven-day new case average still hovers just above 32.

The province doesn't have news conferences or send out news releases on Fridays, but some numbers are still available on its COVID-19 data dashboards.

News releases come out on Mondays and Thursdays. That means some information not included in the dashboard like the age and health region of the person who died won't be announced until after the weekend.

It also means Winnipeg's test positivity rate won't be updated until then. On Thursday, that number sat at 1.8 per cent.

As of Friday, Manitoba has fully vaccinated 73.8 per cent of its eligible population against the illness, the province's online vaccine dashboard says. Among those with at least one dose, that number remains 80.7 per cent.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Manitoba has identified 57,972 COVID-19 cases.

Of those people, 56,201 are listed as recovered and 586 are still deemed active cases, the dashboard says.

The province completed 2,103 more tests for the illness on Thursday, bringing the total number of swabs done in Manitoba to 893,499.