Manitoba Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Jazz Atwall announced 290 new cases of COVID-19 this afternoon bringing the five day test positivity rate to 7.2 percent.  He also reported one additional death in the Winnipeg region. Of the new cases 187are in the Winnipeg region with much lower numbers in other regions including 17 in Northern health.  Of the total 38,729 reported cases 2375 are active and 35,380 individuals have recovered. A total of 2095 variants of concern cases have been reported with 830 active.

Atwal says they are not considering a lockdown to help reduce numbers.  He explains they have to balance that risk of negative impacts of not putting new restrictions in and overloading our acute care systems noting you see what happened in Ontario and other countries where the whole system collapsed.  He says obviously they are not going down that road, that’s not going to happen here but there are negative consequences to shutting everything down on social health, on mental health so they have to look at both sides of it and find that balance and that’s what they’re striving for from a public health perspective.

Eligibility for the AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine has expanded to include people aged 30 to 39 with priority health conditions.