The Manitoba government announced March 17 that services at licensed child-care centres in the province will be suspended at the end of the day on Friday, March 20 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
Home-based child-care providers are being allowed to continue operations beyond Friday and the province is creating dedicated child-care options for front-line and essential services staff such as health care workers, police, firefighters or paramedics who can not find alternative child care. People included in this group can call 204-945-0776 or 1-888-213-4754.
The government also announced that all casinos will be closed down as of midnight March 17 and that public health officials are recommending the immediate suspension of visitors to long-term health care facilities, except for compassionate reasons or in the event of imminent death.
Public health officials are also recommending the cancellation of gatherings for more than 50 people and advising all Manitobans to cancel or postpone any non-essential international travel. All returning international travellers must self-isolate and monitor themselves for 14 days after returning to Canada and physicians, health-care providers and support staff returning from international must self-identify to their organization or site’s occupational health services.
A new online assessment tool to help people determine if they need to call Health Links is now available and can be accessed via the provincial COVID-19 website at https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/.
Nearly 1,700 patients have visited dedicated testing sites in Winnipeg and Thompson during the past five days, including 481 yesterday. The Thompson testing site in the Plaza mall screened 100 peopel and tested 13 of the them for COVID-19 during its first day of operation March 16. There have not yet been any presumptive positive tests of residents of the Northern Regional Health Authority area. Testing clinics in The Pas and Flin Flon opened March 17.
