COVID-19 hospitalizations drop by 9 in Manitoba but still too early to say if virus has peaked
CBC
Manitoba public health officials report three new COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday and a nine-patient decline in hospitalizations.
There are now 720 people in hospital with the virus while the province's death toll related to COVID-19 is now 1,524.
There have been 132 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in January in Manitoba. That makes it the fourth-deadliest month of the pandemic, so far.
The three worst months were all during the second wave: December 2020 (355), November 2020 (243) and January 2021 (162).
Among COVID-19 patients in hospital, 49 are in intensive care units, the same as Tuesday.
The latest deaths are a man in his 70s and a woman in her 90s, both from the Winnipeg health region, and a woman in her 90s from the Interlake-Eastern health region linked to an outbreak at the Betel Home personal care home.
More details were also released about seven deaths reported Tuesday on the province's online dashboard.
They include two men — one in his 50s and one in his 60s — from the Winnipeg region.
The remainder are all from the Southern Health region: two men in their 70s, a woman in her 70s and two men in their 80s.
"Hospitalization rates are high, although stable, and the same goes with ICU admissions at this point," Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said.
"We're continuing to see a significant amount of spread of COVID-19 in the community."
There were another 637 cases of COVID-19 reported Wednesday — the same number of cases reported Tuesday — although Roussin repeated that the numbers are a significant underestimate of the actual number of new cases each day.
Many people are now using rapid tests, the results of which are not entered into the provincial database, and Manitoba has strictly restricted access to PCR tests at provincial sites to protect capacity.
Close to half of the latest reported cases are in the Winnipeg health region, which has 303.
