Province announcing highest COVID case count Thursday

There are 560 newly-announced COVID-19 cases in Manitoba and three deaths.

All three new deaths Thursday are linked to the B.1.1.7 variant of concern. Deaths include:

• a female in her 60s from Prairie Mountain Health region
• a female in his 70s from Prairie Mountain Health region
• a male in his 70s from Winnipeg health region

On Wednesday, Manitoba reached one thousand COVID-19 deaths. Our current total is 1,002 after a data correction.

There are 560 new cases of the virus in Manitoba, bringing the province over a record set on November 23 at 546 cases.

New cases include:

• 431 cases in the Winnipeg health region
• 38 cases in the Interlake-Eastern health region
• 34 cases in the Prairie Mountain Health region
• 30 cases in the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region
• 27 cases in the Northern health region

After removing three cases in a data correction, there are 43,700 total cases and 38,652 recoveries. There are 4,046 active cases, with most of those in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg's five-day test positivity rate is 14.4 per cent. Manitoba's rate is 12 per cent. The province says  4,767 laboratory tests were completed yesterday, bringing the total number of completed tests to 710,248.

In the hospital, there are 240 people, with 62 of those in ICU. There are 183 people in the hospital with active COVID-19, and 49 of those in ICU.

There are 57 people in hospital with COVID-19 who are no longer infectious but continue to require care, including 13 in ICU.

CN Rail's outbreak is over. Donwood Manor Personal Care Home is the site of an outbreak and is now Critical (Red) level on the #RestartMB Pandemic Response System.