34 more COVID-19 hospitalizations, 7 deaths reported in Manitoba on Thursday

There are 34more hospitalizations of people with COVID-19 in Manitoba on Thursday, the province's online coronavirus dashboard says.

The update brings the total number of people hospitalized with the illness to 665. There are still 50 COVID-19 patients in intensive care, the dashboard says.

Those patients make up just under half of the 103 patients in the province's ICUs, a spokesperson for Shared Health, which oversees health-care delivery in Manitoba, said in an email.

The total number of intensive care patients in the province is up three since Wednesday.

Before the pandemic, Manitoba's baseline capacity for its critical care beds was 72.

Seven more people with the illness have died in Manitoba. Six of them were from the Winnipeg health region while one was from the Southern Health region, the dashboard says.

Those deaths bring the province's total linked to COVID-19 to 1,485. More details about the people who died are expected in the government's COVID-19 news release on Friday.

Manitoba also reported 851 new cases of the coronavirus on the dashboard, though that's lower than the true number of infections.

The underrepresentation is because of limited testing aftera surge in cases linked to the highly contagious Omicron variant, and because the province isn't tracking positive results from self-administered rapid tests.

Almost half of the cases that were officially reported on Thursday are in the Winnipeg health region, which has 403.

The rest of the confirmed infections are in the Interlake-Eastern health region with 141, the Northern Health Region with 137, the Prairie Mountain Health region with 96 and the Southern Health region with 74.

As of Thursday, 36 per cent of eligible Manitobans had three doses of COVID-19 vaccine, while 42 per cent had just two. Another seven per cent only had their first shot, while 15 per cent have not been vaccinated at all, the province's website says.

Based on the last six weeks of COVID-19 data in Manitoba, people who aren't fully vaccinated are three times as likely to be hospitalized with the illness, 11 times as likely to be admitted to an ICU and 10 times as likely to die from the coronavirus, the website says.

Manitoba's five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate rose slightly to 33.2 per cent, up from 33.1 on Wednesday.

The province completed 2,337 more tests for the illness on Wednesday, the dashboard says.

There are now officially 35,742 active COVID-19 cases in Manitoba, while 75,969 people who tested positive for the illness are deemed to have recovered.

Manitoba also reported 97 more COVID-19 cases that have been linked to schools across the province. Of those infections, 28 are among students and 69 are in staff members, the province's online schools dashboard says.