Manitoba goes full code red Province-wide lockdown follows 384 new COVID-19 cases, five more deaths By: Danielle Da Silva Posted: 1:40 PM CST Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020

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Manitoba is tripping its pandemic “circuit breaker” to cut off the COVID-19 surge before the province’s health-care system is completely overloaded.

Chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin unveiled a sweeping lockdown being imposed province-wide Thursday, as all metrics by which a pandemic response is measured worsened this week.

“Our numbers have been going in the wrong direction for quite some time. If we continue along this trajectory, we’re going to see increasing strain on that health-care system,” Roussin said Tuesday.

“I know at a time like this, many Manitobans are worried or scared,” he said. “But we do have very concrete things that we can implement right now to reduce the transmission of the virus, to protect ourselves, the people around us, the people we love, (and) protect our health-care providers on the front lines putting themselves at risk caring for Manitobans.”

On Tuesday, Manitoba reported 384 new COVID-19 cases, five more deaths, and a five-day test positivity rate of 10.6 per cent for the province (10 per cent for Winnipeg).

Circuit breakers are simple switches designed to protect an electrical circuit from damage caused by excess current. However, reversing the pandemic trend and taking the load off the health-care system won’t be as easy as hitting reset.

Manitoba’s top doctor said he plans to keep province-wide code red restrictions in place for four weeks, barring any dramatic change in test positivity rates or new reported cases.

“As we see those numbers improve, we’ll be able to again loosen these restrictions. We won’t be back to normal for quite some time,” Roussin said.

Relative to other Canadian provinces, the rate of infection in Manitoba over the past 14 days is the greatest, with 301 infections per 100,000 people, as of Monday.

Currently, the province’s test positivity rate exceeds that of the United States, which has a seven-day positivity rate of 8.3 per cent, according to the John Hopkins (University) Coronavirus Research Center.

By pulling the plug on social gatherings, closing non-essential retail businesses, gyms and salons, and ordering religious and cultural gatherings to go on hiatus, Roussin said the number of connections between people will be reduced and, in turn, so will transmission of the novel coronavirus.

A number of factors have to be considered in rolling back restrictions, he noted.

“If we’re going to lift these early, we’d have to see a dramatic decline in that (test positivity rate) to that three per cent or less,” Roussin said. “We’d have to see our overall case numbers dramatically decline. We certainly can’t continue a trend with 300 or 400 cases a day.

“And then, of course, we’re going to have to see our health-care system not under strain.”

The province now has 5,390 active cases, with 207 people in hospital — 30 in intensive care. The novel coronavirus has claimed the lives of 114 Manitobans.

On Tuesday, Roussin reported the deaths of a Winnipeg man in his 70s, a man in his 70s from the Southern Health region, a Winnipeg woman in her 80s (linked to the outbreak at Seine River Retirement Residence), a Winnipeg woman in her 80s (linked to the outbreak at Maples care home), and a Winnipeg woman in her 90s (linked to the outbreak at Victoria General Hospital).

Shared Health chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa said new intensive care beds continue to be added to Manitoba hospitals, as demand requires.

On Tuesday, Siragusa said critical care beds were 91 per cent full, and 22 COVID-19 patients were on ventilators.

New medicine beds are also being added incrementally as more people are admitted to hospital and, so far, 449 non-urgent and elective surgeries have been cancelled, with more being considered for postponement, she noted.

“With those measures in place, we still have capacity for medicine, but it is ongoing effort to keep adding so that we can manage the influx,” Siragusa said.

While Manitobans are being told to eliminate close contacts outside of their household as the quickest way to be rid of code red, University of Manitoba community health sciences Prof. Michelle Driedger said the provincial government needs to show the same level of response, if it expects the public to buy-in.

“We need to see that the government is able to provide the kind of reassurances that we need, provide the kind of clarity in the case numbers that we have,” she said.

Enhanced contact tracing, added resources for health-care professionals, robust data sharing, and faster test result reporting could inspire the public to follow government guidance, she added.

“We have to have confidence in the system and what government is able to do.”

— with files from Carol Sanders

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca

Danielle Da Silva
Reporter

Danielle Da Silva is a general assignment reporter.

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