Manitoba reports 2 new COVID-19 deaths

Health officials are reporting two new deaths in connection with COVID-19 Thursday.

The provincial response level in the #RestartMB Pandemic Response System is moving from restricted (orange) to caution (yellow), effective Aug. 7

This change reflects that the spread of COVID-19 is at low to moderate levels.

The latest victims are one male in his 50s from the Winnipeg health region and one female in her 60s from the Interlake-Eastern health region.

One of the deaths has been linked to the Alpha variant and the other was due to an unspecified variant of concern, officials said in a release.

A total of 1,815 laboratory tests were completed yesterday, bringing the total number of lab tests completed since early February 2020 to 880,959.

The current five-day test positivity rate is 2.1 per cent provincially and 1.8 per cent in Winnipeg.

Since Aug. 3, 54 new cases of the virus have been identified while six cases have had to be removed due to data correction, bringing the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Manitoba to 57,739.

The total number of confirmed deaths for the virus is 1,183 and 56,028 have recovered.

Additionally, a total of 91 Manitobans have been hospitalized with 17 patients receiving intensive care, four people in intensive care units with active COVID-19 and 13 people who are no longer infectious but continue to require critical care.

3:43 Answering your COVID-19 questions, August 5