Eight of the new northern cases announced Monday came from the Island Lake health district, while two were from Thompson and one each were from the Sayisi Dene/Tadoule/Barren Lands/Brochet/Northlands/Lac Brochet and The Pas/Opaskwayak/Kelsey health districts. There have now been 4,149 positive tests for COVID-19 in the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) since the pandemic began. 718 of those cases are currently considered active. Public health was able to recategorize a number of cases previously listed as active as closed over the weekend, leading to the number of active cases in the province and in the north dropping by half. Close to half of all active cases in the province are still in the NRHA.
It was Thompson’s turn to be the northern health district with a disproportionate number of new COVID-19 cases Feb. 3. Thirty-five of 55 northern cases announced on Wednesday were in the . . .
Thompson and Northern Manitoba got some good news Feb. 1 – and it wasn’t leaked information a day early that the groundhog saw or didn’t see his shadow – whichever one means an early end to winter . . .
The southern, Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain health regions reported only 12 cases between them, while there were 18 in the Winnipeg region and 53 in the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA). Forty of the northern cases – nearly half of the province’s total – were from the Island Lake health district, while the Thompson/Mystery lake health district had six new cases. “A large number or most of our cases are from the north, so two-thirds, 53 cases from the NRHA, and three-quarters in one defined area in the north that’s related to a couple of First Nations communities,” said Manitoba acting deputy chief public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal at a media briefing on Tuesday. “Our test positivity’s coming down in the southern half of Manitoba. In the NRHA it still remains a little high.”
“I was going to wait for one in The Pas but I thought I’d better get one here when I had a chance,” said Kitzul, who’s worked in health care for about half a century and had no doubts about his decision to get vaccinated. “I think it’s a very good thing. It’s going to help people. They should get it. There’s no excuse. If anybody refuses it and they end up on an ICU unit, I don’t feel sorry for them.” The first two Thompson residents to receive the vaccine at the TRCC are at the beginning of their health care careers. Dylan Stacey, a fourth-year nursing student at University College of the North and a health care aide at the medical, surgical and pediatric ward on the second floor of Thompson General Hospital, said he was a little nervous about getting the vaccine but hopes that it will be the first step in an eventual return to life as it was before COVID-19 arrived in Manitoba.