359 patients in hospital in Manitoba's last daily COVID-19 update

Manitoba is reportinga 10-patient decreasein hospitalizations in the province's last COVID-19 data dashboard update.

There are 359 people in the hospital with COVID-19, including 19 people in intensive care a one-patient increase.

The COVID-19 data dashboard, which has been updated every weekday, will no longer be updated after this week, the province announced on Thursday.

The province is moving the information to a weekly epidemiology report, which doesn't include daily numbersand publishes with a one-week delay.

Manitobans will no longer have access to real-time daily COVID-19 data.

CBC requested commentfrom Chief ProvincialPublic Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin and acting deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwalon how Manitobans can do risk assessments without daily data.

Both requests were denied.

The province also denied CBC's requests for quick sharing of wastewater monitoring data, which is collected by the federal government and given to the province regularly.

Weekly epidemiology reports on COVID-19have been published online since May 2020.

The next one will be available on March 31. The data will be from the week of March 20 to March 26. Next week's data won't be published until April 7.

A total of 153 new lab-confirmed cases were reported on Friday, which is an undercount due to limited access to PCR testing and no tracking of rapid test results. On March 20, the province closed 18 testing sites.

There are3,830 cases listed as active. This is also an undercount.

The provincial five-day test positivity rate dropped marginallyto 12.9 per cent from 13.1 per cent. This number is also affected by limited testing capacity.

To date, 1,739 people in Manitoba have died due to COVID-19.

The provincial vaccine dashboard will continue to be updated until March 31. After that, vaccine data will be available weekly in the epidemiology report.

A total of86.4 per cent of eligible Manitobans have one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine,82.7 per cent have two doses, and44.6 per cent have three doses.