It’s not all gone here yet - but it’s close.
Only one case of COVID-19 remains active in Manitoba’s Flin Flon/Snow Lake/Cranberry Portage/Sherridon district, with no cases remaining in the far north east 2 health zone in Saskatchewan covering Creighton, Denare Beach and other nearby communities.
The Flin Flon district is one of several districts in the Northern Health Region (NHR) where one or no active cases of COVID-19 are currently present, according to provincial government statistics. Only one district in the NHR - Lynn Lake/Marcel Colomb/Leaf Rapids/O-Pipon-Na-Piwin/Granville Lake - has no active cases, but the Churchill region (which is covered by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority) also has no active cases found.
By contrast, the NHR still has 209 active cases of the disease, with more than 40 per cent of those active cases in The Pas/OCN/Kelsey district. That district has 85 active cases as of July 13, ahead of the second-highest district, the Shamattawa/York Factory/Tataskweyak/Split Lake district, which has 63 active cases.
No other northern district has more than 20 cases - only one other district, Island Lake, even has an active case counts in the double digits.
Northern Saskatchewan has seen increasing case numbers, mostly due to the far north east region, but not in the portion of the region that contains Creighton, Denare Beach, Pelican Narrows, Sandy Bay or Deschambault Lake. The reason is due to an ongoing outbreak at Hatchet Lake Dene Nation at Wollaston Lake, a remote community about 280 kilometres north of Flin Flon near the Northwest Territories border. The Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority (NITHA) reported 104 cases remained active in the community as of July 11.
Health data
Manitoba reported only 23 net new cases July 13, including four new cases in the NHR. One new death was reported due to COVID-19 – a man in his 40s in Winnipeg who had tested positive for the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant of concern.
During the July 12 provincial media briefing, Manitoba chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin provided provincial statistics on June hospitalizations due to COVID-19, sharing that 412 people were admitted to Manitoba hospitals with COVID-19. That number is down 45 per cent from May.
The overwhelming majority of people who were hospitalized were not fully vaccinated - 74 per cent of people had not had any vaccine doses, while 22 per cent had one dose but tested positive within two weeks of the dose. Ninety people from Manitoba were admitted to intensive care as a result of COVID-19 - either in Manitoba or in other provinces - and 77 per cent of the admitted people had not had even one dose.
Roussin said the statistics are not meant to shame anybody who had not received a dose of vaccine or who was not fully vaccinated, but said that vaccination is the strongest tool against the pandemic.
“We don't bring this up to blame or to shame anyone for the reason of their illness. We're here showing the power of the vaccine, that we see very few people being admitted to hospital, even after a single dose but especially after two doses. We see the power of that vaccine in preventing severe outcomes and that's what we've been really focused on throughout this whole pandemic - to not have those severe outcomes to ensure our health care system is there for all Manitobans,” Roussin said.
“As we see less and less Manitobans that are unvaccinated, we're going to expect to see that translate into less and less need for hospitalizations and ICU admissions and these severe outcomes. This is why we report this data and we're going to try to report this regularly.”
