Infections 'clearly on an upswing' as more than half Manitoba's new COVID-19 cases among First Nations people

Public health officials in Manitoba are urging First Nations people who still aren't fully vaccinated to get their shots as COVID-19 infections in those communities make up an increasing proportion of the province's overall caseload.

"We're in a better place than we were in about a year ago. But what I find really concerning is we are clearly on an upswing here," Dr. Marcia Anderson said on a Facebook Live webinar hosted by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs on Thursday.

Anderson is the public health lead of the Manitoba First Nations pandemic response team.

Of the 107 new cases of the illness reported in Manitoba Thursday, more than half 55 were among First Nations people. That included 50 among people living on reserve, officials on the webinar said.

While vaccine uptake on First Nations is only slightly lower than Manitoba's rate overall (81.7 per cent compared to 82.2), only about 63.3 per cent of First Nations people living off-reserve have gotten both doses.

And Anderson said some communities have lower vaccination rates than others. That effect has also been amplified by large populations of people under 12 on some First Nations, she said.

"The concern with this virus, and particularly the delta variant, is how easily and quickly it can spread, which leads to that kind of exponential growth," Anderson said, pointing to projections that suggested in a severe scenario, Manitoba could reach 500 cases a day by mid-December.

"Our best opportunity to not be making up 50 per cent of those 500 cases a day in December is to get vaccinated."

Overall, the five-day test positivity rate among on-reserve First Nations people is now 10.9 per cent.

Among all First Nations people in Manitoba including those off reserve it's 8.8 per cent, stillmore than double the provincial rate of 3.8 per cent.

'Not just the north'

On top of outbreaks driving cases in a few northern First Nations, new COVID-19 infections are now spread out across 17 or nearly one-third of the communities in Manitoba, Anderson said.

"So it's not that we just have two or three who are driving the numbers," she said.

"It's not just the north. We have cases in the south as well. We have cases in [the] Interlake."

Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief provincial public health officer, said earlier this week the few outbreaks driving disproportionately high infection rates in the Northern Health Region which as of Thursday had more than one-third of Manitoba's active cases were skewing the region's data.

"There's a lot of communities up there, a lot of land up there as well. So we do have a couple of First Nations communities that are experiencing an outbreak, which is really skewing just numbers because these are isolated, localized communities," Atwal said on a call with media on Tuesday.

"Things like case numbers and test positivity can look very skewed. And we need to interpret those numbers carefully, depending on the population we're looking at and the geographic area of the setting."

Anderson said the disproportionate spread of COVID-19 among First Nations people is rooted in factors like overcrowded housing and classrooms in communities and lower than average income and food security levels.

"Those things are not going to be fixed entirely by a vaccine, but that vaccine is a really important layer of protection," she said, urging people to think about where they want their community's COVID-19 situation to be in the coming months.

"I saw a post for jingle bingo in December. If we want to all celebrate there, the only way for us to do that, to mitigate the trajectory that we're on, is to increase that vaccine coverage."

The First Nations pandemic response team is also working on efforts to specifically target communities with lower vaccine uptake, saidMelanie MacKinnon, who helps lead the group.

"We're hoping to update our information in the coming days so that we'll be able to provide kind of more regional specific information as to where we need to target our our our efforts," MacKinnon said.