Manitoba is once again placing restrictions on visitors to hospitals and personal care homes.

Lanette Siragusa is Chief Nursing Officer with Shared Health. She announced Thursday afternoon that only essential care providers, designated family caregivers and select exceptions will be able to visit health care facilities for the immediate future. She notes they are making every effort to limit the spread of COVID-19 in health care facilities.

"We absolutely recognize the importance of social visits and we are making this temporary measure while community transmission is so high," she explains.

Also on Thursday, Siragusa provided more information on the decision to allow sick healthcare workers to continue going to work. She notes this is only for those who are capable of going to work and who do not have COVID-19.

"We are not asking staff to come to work if they feel sick and need to be home," she says.

Siragusa compares this to the days prior to COVID-19 when many people would go to work with minor sniffles.

"It could be a rhinovirus, it could be just a minor respiratory, then we would welcome them back, just as we always have," she says. "We see that as a way of supporting the healthcare system in a safe way."

According to Siragusa, Manitoba is seeing increased illness and positive cases among health care workers. In fact, for the week of December 19 to 25, there were 418 health workers that tested positive for COVID-19, which is nearly seven times the number seen the previous week. Of those 418 cases, there were 96 nurses and nursing students, 49 physicians and physicians in training, while the rest included allied health, emergency medical system staff and various support staff.

Meanwhile, as reported earlier, Manitoba set an all-time high on Thursday with 1,123 new infections of COVID-19. There are currently 190 patients in hospital due to COVID-19, which is the highest total since the third wave. Siragusa says in the last week alone, our province has seen a 32 per cent increase in the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital.

Of the 190 patients in hospital, Siragusa says 34 of them are under the age of 40, including three of these individuals who are in ICU.

"And while the magnitude of the increase to our medicine beds is relatively significant, the impact to our intensive care units has so far been relatively stable," she says.

As of Thursday afternoon, there are 29 COVID-19 patients in the ICU in Manitoba, with 25 of those being active cases. She notes these numbers have remained relatively unchanged over the last week.

Siragusa says there are a total of 96 patients in the ICU in Manitoba. Prior to the pandemic, our province had 72 ICU beds, while today it has 113.