Day camps, child-care to return July 1

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This article was published 17/06/2021 (1043 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Summer day camps for kids will be permitted and school-age children will be able to return to child care as of July 1, Families Minister Rochelle Squires announced on Friday as the province reported four deaths and 189 new COVID-19 infections.

“We know that a parent’s ability to work may be dependent on the availability of child care,” Squires said.

“I would like to acknowledge Manitoba’s early learning and child-care sector, and all Manitobans, for their flexibility to adapt to the advice from our public health officials as we continue to navigate this pandemic.”

Summer day camps will open with cohort sizes of 20 children, Squires said. At this time, there are no changes to the sizes for licensed child care facilities (30 children).

Deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said day camp programs will only be an option for families with children 11 and under who do not attend licensed child-care facilities.

“We’re providing this information today to allow sites and parents to begin planning,” Atwal said. “More details will follow next week as new public health orders are finalized.

“This will help alleviate some of the pressure on licensed child-care facilities.”

On Friday, Manitoba reported the deaths of four more people.

The province said a Winnipeg woman in her 30s infected and with an unspecified variant of concern, a Winnipeg woman in her 60s and a Winnipeg woman in her 80s infected with the Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant of concern and a woman in 60s from the Prairie Mountain Health infected with the Alpha variant, have died.

On Friday, new infections were reported in all health regions, including 87 in Winnipeg, 38 in the North, 23 in Southern Health, and 19 in both Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain Health.

On Thursday, 2,122 COVID-19 tests were processed by laboratories.

The five-day test positivity rate in both Winnipeg and provincewide was 8.3 per cent.

To date, 130 Delta (B.1.617.2) variant cases have been reported by the province.

“The (Delta) variant, in particular, has a potential to be more transmissible and have more severe impacts on individuals,” Atwal said, adding that work is underway to incorporate the mutated virus into pandemic projections.

Atwal said due to data transmission errors, previously identified cases of the Delta variant were not reported on the province’s dashboard.

Those cases were manually entered on Thursday, Atwal said.

 

“This has not affected how public health has monitored or managed each one of these cases and work is now underway to address the technical issue,” Atwal said.

A total of 258 Manitobans were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Friday, including 80 people in intensive care. Twenty of those patients were being treated out of province (19 in Ontario and one in Alberta).

The province said 1,115 Manitobans have died of COVID-19. One death was removed from the count due to a data correction, the province said.

The death was a woman in her 80s from Winnipeg health region and linked to the alpha variant of concern and the outbreak at Seven Oaks General Hospital (3U4-7). The death was reported June 16.

“Despite the declining case numbers over the past week, we expect hospitalization and ICU numbers to remain high,” Atwal said.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca