WINNIPEG BECOMING CODE RED ON PANDEMIC RESPONSE

By: Maria Garcia Manzano: AEIC of The Quill

On Friday October 30th Manitoba announced a record of 480 new cases of COVID-19. Three new deaths were also added to the increasing death count in Manitoba and it now sits at 65. Of the 480 new cases the Winnipeg Region accounts for 309 of them, 10 of the 480 come from our region Prairie Mountain Health. Due to the increase in cases in Winnipeg, they will be moved to code red of the pandemic response system. Dr. Brent Roussin is hoping that the most restrictive level of the pandemic response will force Manitobans to drive the ever-growing curve of Covid-19. The rest of the province will also move to code orange as the province tries to decrease the number of cases.

How did Winnipeg get to Code red and what does its implementation look like? What does this mean for Brandon? These may be questions you are asking yourself. To answer your questions, Winnipeg is on the code red pandemic response because:

There has been extensive community transmission of COVID-19 occurring and is not contained.
There are widespread outbreaks and new clusters that cannot be controlled through testing and contact tracing.
The virus is being transmitted at levels that public health and the health system deem concerning or critical.

*This was taken from the MB Pandemic Response website: https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/restartmb/prs/system/red-critical.html

The Winnipeg Region has been reckless and as a result the uncontrollable spread of Covid-19 now roams throughout the city. Now at the most restricted level of the pandemic response Winnipeg will be force to go into lockdown. This means that they will see social gatherings being restricted to 5 people, restaurants and bars close their dine in services, retail spaces being reduced to 25% capacity, Sports and recreation programming being suspended, Gyms and fitness centers reduced to 25% capacity and mask wearing mandatory even while working out. These are just a few examples of the restrictions that will become fully effective November 2nd.

Many more restrictions could take place and a complete list can be found at: https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/restartmb/prs/system/red-critical.html

What does this mean for Brandon? As mentioned before the rest of the province will be implementing the orange code. Brandon has already been here, and although many individuals complained about the mask mandate imposed on all public indoor places, Brandon as a whole saw its implementation decrease the number of cases being reported. Thus, we can do it again. We will also see a reduced social gathering capacity and restaurants and retail spaces will reduce capacity to 50%. Furthermore, if the Winnipeg region does not get a handle on their surge of cases and their hospitals begin to run out of room in the ICU, they will begin to transfer patients to Brandon. In case you hadn’t notice our hospital is ill-equipped to handle the surge of new cases.

Wear a mask, wash your hands, limit the times you go into stores and limit your circle of friends. If we do this, if we put more effort into driving the curve down, we will succeed. Our province used to be one of the few that had double digit case numbers, we had a single digit death count. Now, we have been careless and we must now face the consequences.