COVID-19

Step Two of the Roadmap to Reopen will officially begin tomorrow at 12:01 a.m., a date many personal care service owners have been waiting for. 

On June 24, the Ontario government announced that Step Two will take effect on June 30, two days earlier than the anticipated July 2 start date and a local business owner says this couldn't come at a better time. 

Due to technical issues, there was not a numbers update on Friday or throughout the weekend.

However, since Thursday the province is reporting 209 new cases after performing 4,500 tests which translates into a positivity rate of .87 per cent.

The breakdown is as follows:

Changing health orders and a pandemic is not stopping a couple of seven years from tying the knot this weekend, saying "it was just something that couldn't wait."

When Dryden Dilts and Caity Kauenhofen, a couple from Southern Manitoba, got engaged in December they didn't know how quickly and often their June 30 wedding plans would change throughout the pandemic.

"You kinda roll with the punches. Things did get worse than our worse expectations," Dilts says.

If Manitoba continues following a downward trend in COVID-19 cases, the province's top doctor says more reopenings could happen sooner than expected.

Dr. Brent Roussin says he cannot say when more reopenings will for sure happen, but notes it could come as soon as mid-July.

"We are rolling towards a post-pandemic Manitoba but we're not there yet," Roussin says in a Monday-afternoon press conference.

Cases and hospitalization rates continue to drop in Manitoba. 

Public health officials advise no new deaths in people with COVID-19 have been reported today.

The current five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate is 6.2 per cent provincially and 5.8 per cent in Winnipeg. As of 9:30 a.m. today, 61 new cases of the virus have been identified. The total number of lab-confirmed cases in Manitoba to 56,036.

Walk-in vaccinations at a Winnipeg supersite are opening up to include young people aged 12 to 17.

After over a week of uncertainty with second COVID-19 vaccines for youth, on Friday second doses for those aged 12 to 17 opened. Now, the province says Pfizer vaccines are now possible at the Leila super site's walk-in site.

The Northwestern Health Unit has confirmed one new positive COVID-19 test result in the region. 

The positive test was confirmed in the District of Rainy River area. Follow up with the persons involved and their contacts has started according to protocol. Anyone who is identified as a contact for these cases will be contacted directly.

The NWHU is reporting 7 active cases across the district. Six of those active cases are in the Rainy River Health Region and one case in the Kenora Health Region that was confirmed to be outside of the NWHU catchment area.

Public health officials say that a young child has died from COVID-19.

That individual is a female under 10 from the Winnipeg health region. Her death was announced on Sunday. No other details on the case were available.

The current five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate is 6.5% provincially and 6.9% in Winnipeg. As of 9:30 a.m. Sunday, 97 new cases of the virus have been identified. However, one case has been removed due to data correction. This brings the net-new number of cases today to 96 and the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Manitoba to 55,975.

Ontario residents felt a more sense of normalcy last week as the provincial government announced an earlier start date to Step Two of the Roadmap to Reopen.

As of Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. the province will officially enter Step Two.

Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford commented on the announcement.

“In Northwestern Ontario, we've done a terrific job. The Northwest Health Unit has done an extraordinary job. We promised the federal government if they gave us the vaccines, we would get them in arms, and our numbers here are terrific.” said Rickford

The Northwestern Health Unit has reported no new cases of COVID-19 across the region.

Currently, there are 10 active cases in the district. Six in the Rainy River region, one case each in the Dryden/Red Lake and Sioux Lookout health regions, and two in the Kenora Health region but one of those cases was reported outside of the NWHU catchment area.