With no new cases of COVID-19 cases reported in Manitoba April 28, the province is beginning to look toward opening up closed services.
The province has carried out 325 tests at Cadham Provincial Laboratory since April 27. The province has detected 57 active cases.
Manitoba chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said testing criteria is expanding province-wide to cover all Manitobans with COVID-19 symptoms. All symptomatic northern residents were already eligible to be tested. There have been over 23,000 COVID-19 tests conducted in Manitoba since the outbreak began.
Earlier in the day, Premier Brian Pallister announced Manitoba would be contracting a private lab to help shore up testing capacity. Roussin said the decision was made because the lab could be quickly brought into provincial infrastructure.
“They’re already certified, they’re already linked into our reporting system,” Roussin said.
“We can move quite quickly, they’re already involved in testing, they do run a significant amount of tests in our system already.”
Anyone with a cough, runny nose, sore throat or fever, no matter how mild, is eligible to be tested, although Roussin said health care providers usually need to see two of the four symptoms to test.
Roussin said he doesn’t think there are large numbers of COVID-19 cases out there the province hasn’t detected and the proportion of people testing positive to go down.
“We expect roughly 15 per cent of people who develop COVID-19 to be hospitalized,” he said.
“We’re testing everyone who is hospitalized and our hospitalization rate is right around that range. It’s very unlikely we’ve missed a huge number of cases out there.”
The low number of positive tests has led into Manitoba planning to release details on a reopening plan tomorrow.
“Our reopening strategy will be a cautious one,” Roussin said.
“One that will be evidence-based and our numbers will be the guide for our strategy.”
Roussin added the plan will mostly look at seven-day running averages to determine if the next step can be reached.
Those looking to be tested should call Health Links-Info Santé for an appointment at (204) 788-8200 or toll-free at 1-888-315-9257.
