Another 18 deaths, 360 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Saturday

This is the second highest number of deaths recorded in a single day since the outbreak, with 19 deaths reported on December 5 and 18 on Wednesday.

COVID-19-related deaths related to eight outbreaks in Winnipeg nursing homes on Saturday:

• Three people – one woman and two men, in their 80s – spread out at the Charleswood Care Center.
• Three people spread out at the Park Manor Care Home in Winnipeg – a woman in her 60s and two women in their 90s.
• Two men – one in his 70s and one in his 80s – spread out at the Oakview Place Personal Care Home.

The latest deaths include:

• Seven other people from the Winnipeg health area: a man in his 40s, a woman and two men in their 60s, two women in their 70s and a man in his 80s.
• A man in his 60s from the Interlake-Eastern Health area.
• A man from the Southern Health Area in his 80s.
• A man in his 80s spread the word at the Bethesda Regional Health Center in Steinbach.

The vast majority of new cases – 198 – were in Winnipeg, another 56 in the Interlake-Eastern Health Region, 52 in the Northern Health Region, 28 in the Southern Health Region and 26 in the Prairie Mountain Health Region.

The province reports 5,630 active cases and says 14,637 have recovered from the virus.

There are 289 people in the hospital due to COVID-19, 42 of whom are in intensive care.

Manitoba’s five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate – a positive return test rolling average – is again up to 13.9 percent. The rate in Winnipeg is 13.2 percent.

On Friday, 2,585 tests were performed, bringing the total number of lab tests completed since the beginning of February to 386,007.

Another outbreak was announced at the River Ridge II retirement home on Scotia Street in Winnipeg. The site moved to the critical or red level of the province’s color-coded pandemic response system.

Four outreach is now being considered, including the Women’s Correctional Center in Headingley, Winnipeg’s Middle Church Home, and the Lions Prairie Manor and Douglas Campbell Lodge in Portage Law Prairie.

The province’s latest update comes a day after Manitoba hit the highest number of COVID-19 cases in nearly two weeks. On Friday, With 447 new cases.

More than 100 of those cases are the result of a recent rapid test on Shamatawa First Nation, public health officials said The cases skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, the province announced Saturday that 900 front-line health care workers who meet certain age and office standards can now be recruited to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The province hopes to begin giving Pfizer-BioMTech vaccine to eligible workers immediately on Wednesday, according to a news release on Saturday.