Manitoba Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin announced 62 new cases of COVID-19 this afternoon bringing the five day test positivity rate to 5.3 percent.  He also reported two additional deaths with both in the Winnipeg region. Of the new cases 33 are in Winnipeg and 23 in Northern health with single digits in other regions.  He reported five new cases of variants of concern all from the Winnipeg health region bringing the total in the province to 275.

Roussin reminded residents of the importance of restrictions on travelling to the north.  He explained we want to avoid non-essential travel period but people who are travelling especially to areas where we know transmission is at increased risk, have crowding issues, access to health care issues in those areas so we want to be extra careful so he has the northern travel restrictions and also the advice to get tested prior to travelling to the north.  He adds it’s important to try and keep numbers down especially as we’re seeing an increasing proportion of our cases being related to variants of concern that we need to keep those variants out of our northern communities.

Of the total 34,549 reported COVID cases 1255 are considered active and 32,352 individuals have recovered.