COVID-related hospitalizations in Manitoba continue to drop but the province is still reporting multiple daily deaths of patients infected with the virus.
633 people with COVID were in Manitoba hospitals on Feb. 14, down from recent highs of over 700. 40 of those patients were in intensive care, which is also down from where it was earlier in 2022.
For the week ending Feb. 10, the provincial government says there were 258 new hospitalizations, down 12.2 per cent from the previous week, and 30 new intensive care cases, down 11.8 per cent over the week ending Feb. 3.
The death toll, however, continues to climb, reaching 1,637 since the pandemic began with Monday’s announcement of 19 deaths since Saturday, including two women from Northern Manitoba, one in her 40s and one in her 80s, both reported Feb. 12. 76 northern residents with COVID have now died since the pandemic began.
Manitoba reported 188 new cases of the virus Feb. 14, a fraction of the actual total, given limited eligibility for testing. There were 49 new cases in the northern region, where 63 people are in hospital, five of them in intensive care. All northern health districts have active cases and nine of the 15 have more than 100, including Thompson/Mystery Lake, where there are 230 confirmed cases.
People who have received two or three doses continue to make up the majority of active cases, current hospitalizations and intensive care admissions and recent deaths, though their proportion of hospitalizations (72 per cent), ICU admissions (59 per cent) and deaths (68 per cent) is lower than the percentage of the vaccine-eligible population as a whole who have received two or three doses (80 per cent).
About 58 per cent of children aged five to 11 in Manitoba have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
