What’s been happening in Northern Manitoba lately, with COViD-19 case counts growing while those in the other parts of the province shrink, to the point that the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) reported higher numbers of new cases than Winnipeg several times last week, despite the regions s population being less than 10 per cent of the capital city’s, is, sadly, rather predictable. The same thing happened to the province as a whole as summer turned to fall. Because case numbers had been so low over the summer in most of the province, people reverted to old habits. They spent time eating together in restaurants and shopping and hanging out at the beach. They assumed Manitoba had somehow beaten the virus and let their guard down, reasoning that getting together at Thanksgiving wouldn’t be a problem. And then the case numbers started to grow. And they continued to do so into November, when some days saw more than 500 new cases of COVID-19. And they remained high until
“We definitely have a lot of cases within our northern population in certain areas,” Atwal said. There are now more than 1,500 active cases in the north, including more than 500 in the Island Lake health district. The Canadian military is sending personnel to Garden Hill First Nation on Thursday to support the running of the emergency operations centre, set up an isolation area and provide ground transportation, Global News reported. About 73 per cent of active COVID-19 cases were among First Nations people as of Jan. 19 according to the Manitoba First Nations COVID-19 Pandemic Response Co-ordination Team (PRCT), and First Nations people made up 45 per cent of all those hospitalized in the province due to the virus and 52 per cent of those in intensive care. There were 273 people in total in Manitoba hospitals due to the virus on Wednesday, 129 of whom had active cases. Thirty-six people were receiving intensive care as a result of their infections, though 11 of those patien
“This will be on a temporary basis while supplies are in place to run that site,” said Reimer. “We are also going to be holding off on opening the Vaxport portion of the Thompson site again because we are awaiting further supplies. For the time being we are not taking appointments for the Thomson site but I will let you know when that changes.” One tray of the Pfizer vaccine, about 1,100 doses, is being shipped up fro the first vaccinations. “We have to send a full tray together when we’re sending something frozen so that number of doses will be going up to Thompson and will ensure that the site is open to facilitate providing all of those doses,” Reimer said. “It really depends at this point at how quickly appointments are booked and what the uptake is from folks in the Northern Regional Health Authority and that will help us determine how long the site will be open. After we have better understanding of when we can expect resumption of the higher amounts of shi
The majority of the new cases reported n the north on Monday were from the Island Lake health district, where there were 30 new cases, bringing the total number of active cases in the region to 492. “We’re concerned that we’re seeing an increasingly disproportionate effect on First Nations,” said chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin at the Jan. 18 COVID-19 press conference There were also new cases reported in the Flin Flon/Snow Lake/Cranberry/Sherridon health district (3), the Grand Rapids/Moose Lake/Easterville/Chemawawin health district (4) and the Gillam/Fox Lake, Thompson/Mystery Lake, The Pas/Opaskwayak/Kelsey and Lynn Lake/Marcel Colomb/South Indian Lake/Leaf Rapids health districts, all with two new cases.
Northern Manitoba continued to lead all health regions in the province in the number of new COVID-19 cases on Jan. 15, accounting for 84 of 191 new cases. Five new deaths were reported in the . . .