Manitoba public health had announced they were going to expand eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines in high priority communities. This afternoon they announced the first three communities are in Winnipeg including Downtown East, Point Douglas South and Inkster East.  All people 18 and over who live or work in specified jobs in the area are now eligible for immunization due to high case counts and socio-economic factors. They will release more communities early next week.

They reported 179 new cases of COVID-19 this afternoon bringing the five day test positivity rate to 6.5 percent.  There were two additional deaths in the Winnipeg region with one linked to the B.1.1.7 variant of concern.  Of the new cases 103 were in the Winnipeg region and 29 in Northern health with lower numbers in other regions. Of the total 37,069 reported cases 1739 are considered active, 34,366 individual have recovered and a total of 1201 variants of concern have been reported with 499 active with the Northern health region at 25 reported cases.