3 more COVID-19 deaths, 130 new cases in Manitoba on Wednesday

Three more people in Manitoba have died due to COVID-19 and the province has 130 new cases of the disease, the province's online dashboard says.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate dropped slightly to 4.2 per cent, from 4.3 per cent on Tuesday. The seven-day average number of new cases rose from 97 to 108.

Cases in the Northern Health Region jumped 60, the highest increase out of all the regions on Wednesday. The Southern Health region has 33 new cases, the Winnipeg region has 25, Prairie Mountain Health has nine, and the Interlake-Eastern region has three.

The total number of people in hospital due to COVID-19 rose to 83 from 78, while the number of patients in intensive care units rose to 22 from 17.

Wednesday's deaths bring the toll in Manitoba to 1,240 people, and the new cases bring the total number of COVID-19 cases to 60,738. Of those, 1,121 are active cases and 60,738 have recovered.

Labs completed 3,025 tests on Tuesday.

The number of cases linked to variants of concern increased by 49, to a total of 20,582. There was one more case reclassified as the Alpha variant, but the rest of the increase was unclassified by variant.

Residents of congregate living facilities for older people are now eligible for third doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead on the province's vaccine implementation task force, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The update comes one day after public health restrictions relaxed in parts of the Southern Health region where vaccination rates are higher.

Retail capacity has been limited to 50 per cent in the Southern Health region since the beginning of October, because the area has had a disproportionately high number of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks and the lowest vaccination rate among Manitoba's five health regions.

That restriction no longer applies to the communities of Cartier, Headingley, Macdonald, Ritchot (Niverville-Ritchot), St. François Xavier and Taché.

Since September, Manitoba has been expanding eligibility for third doses. Current eligibility for third doses includes people who live on First Nations, health-care workers with direct contact with patients, residents or clients, people who have only received the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines or a vaccine not approved by Health Canada, residents of all personal care homes and people who are moderately or severely immunocompromised.

The province is also preparing to vaccinate kids as young as five as early as the end of November, pending Health Canada approval of an application from Pfizer.