The only COVID-19 related death announced by Manitoba’s provincial government March 8 was a woman in her 80s from the Northern Regional Health Authority area, where 36 of the province’s 63 new positive tests for the virus originated.
The death of the woman, who was a resident of the Thompson/Mystery Lake health district, according to provincial government data posted online, was the 34th for the northern region and 907th in Manitoba since the first case of the virus was detected in the province nearly one year ago.
There were three new cases of COVID-19 in the Thompson health district on Monday, while there were 14 in Pukatawagan/Mathias Colomb, 10 in Island Lake and four in the Cross Lake/Pimicikamak health district.
There have now been 5,113 cases of COVID-19 in the north since the pandemic began, including about 140 in the the past four days. By contrast, the total number in Manitoba has only gone up from 32,000 on March 3 to 32, 288 on March 8, meaning the north is the location of around half of cases in that time span.
“Certainly the Northern Health Region is most notably affected right now,” said chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin at his March 8 press conference.”There’s a number of First Nations communities that still see a number of cases. We still see a number of cases within Thompson daily as well so there’s been some clusters in that area. We see the transmission in a number of communities.”
164 Manitobans were in hospital due to the virus on Monday, 54 of them with active infections, both down from late last week. Of these, 22 are northerners, including 15 with active infections. Intensive care numbers for the province have also dropped to 22 total patients as of March 8, 10 of them with active infections. Half of the ICU patients with active infections are from the north and there are two other northern residents who are no longer considered infectious but are still in intensive care.
There were five cases among people associated with Thompson schools in the two weeks leading up to March 1, as well as two cases in people linked to Mel Johnson School in Wabowden and one in a person connected to Gillam School over the same time period.
Two more cases of the COVID-19 variant that originated in South Africa have been found in Manitoba since the first known case was announced March 2. There have been a total of three confirmed infections in Manitoba involving the South African variant and six with a variant that originated in the United Kingdom.
The five-day test positivity rate on March 8 was 3.5 per cent, up slightly from where it was March 3 but still lower than the four per cent it was at March 2.
