Dr. Brent Roussin says it is too soon to tell what the impact of Easter gatherings will be.

Manitoba's Chief Public Health Officer says a death that was recently announced is linked to the B.1.1.7 variant. The man was in his 70s from Winnipeg.

As of Thursday morning, 40 new screened or sequenced cases of variants of concern have been discovered. There are 37 are B.1.1.7 variant cases. 

New cases include:

  • 32 from the Winnipeg health region
  • two from Interlake-Eastern health region
  • two from the Prairie Mountain Health region
  • one from the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region

There are three new cases of uncategorized variants, all from Winnipeg. In total, the number of variant of concern cases is 339.

Cases include:

  • B.1.1.7: 298
  • B.1.351: 20
  • uncategorized: 21

The province says 32,781 people have recovered, and 1,066 are active cases after making some changes.

"Ongoing reviews of active case information has allowed for the removal of an additional 317 cases to ‘recovered’ from ‘active’ and provides a more accurate reporting of active cases," they say in a statement.

New COVID-19 cases include:

• 55 cases in the Northern health region
• 18 cases in the Prairie Mountain Health region
• six cases in the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region
• 60 cases in the Winnipeg health region

There are no new COVID-19 cases in the Interlake–Eastern health region.

Roussin says overall, there is a significant amount of household transmission, with workplace and community transmissions following. The doctor says it will take up to four weeks for Manitoba to see the effects of Easter gatherings. Over the past week, 15 Manitobans were ticketed for gatherings in groups larger than allowed under the Public Health Orders.

Three more have died, including:

• a male in his 70s from the Winnipeg health region
• a female in her 70s from the Winnipeg health region, linked to the outbreak at Holy Family Home
• a female in her 80s from the Winnipeg health region

This brings the total number of deaths to 946.

In the hospital there are:

• 58 people in hospital with active COVID-19 as well as 83 people in hospital with COVID-19 who are no longer infectious but continue to require care, for a total of 141 hospitalizations
• 13 people in intensive care units with active COVID-19 as well as 20 people with COVID-19 who are no longer infectious but continue to require critical care, for a total of 33 ICU patients