Manitoba reports 56 infections Thursday after triple-digit day of COVID-19 cases

After reporting more than 100 COVID-19 infectionsin a day for the first time in weeks on Wednesday,Manitoba's daily case count returned to the double-digits on Thursday.

The province recorded 56 new cases and no new deaths, the government said in a news release Thursday.

The105 infections announced on Wednesdaythe most in one day since June 26 has signalled the pandemic's fourth wave is looming.

The death reported on Wednesday has now been identified as a man in his 20s from the Interlake-Eastern health authority. It is the first death of a person aged 29 or younger since late June.

As of Thursday, theprovince's five-day test positivity rate remains stable at 2.8 per cent, while the rate is 1.5 per cent in Winnipeg.

Of the 56 new infections, 44 of them involve people who are not fully vaccinated.

The majority of those 56 cases are in Southern Health (22) and Winnipeg (18). There are also 10 cases in the Northern Health Region and three each in Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain.

There are 65 people hospitalized in the province after getting COVID-19, an increase of one person from Wednesday. The number of people in intensive care with the virus is now 21, up two.

The province also identified 93more cases linked to highly transmissible coronavirus variants than the day before, according to theonline variant dashboard.

The number of cases identified as linked to unspecified variants increased by 73on Thursday. There arealso seven more cases associated with thedelta variant, or B.1.617.2.

The number of active cases linked to variants increased by 66 to 224 cases.

The proportion of eligible Manitobans those 12 and up who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 is now 76 per cent, up 0.2 per cent. Among those with at least one dose, that number is now 81.6per cent, the province's online vaccine dashboard says.

Also Thursday, the provincedeclared aCOVID-19 outbreakat George M. Guimond Care Centre in Sagkeeng First Nation and called the outbreak at the surgical unit atSelkirk Regional Health Centre over.

A total of 1,993 COVID-19 tests were conducted on Wednesday.

There are 443 active cases of the virus in the province and56,847 people are counted among the recovered.COVID-19 has ended the lives of 1,189 people in Manitoba.

In an enforcement update, the province said it has issued 10 tickets from the period of Aug. 9 to Aug. 22, including $5,000 tickets to a pair of businesses and one $8,550 ticket to an individual for violating the Federal Quarantine Act.