Vaccine distribution has begun on a handful of Manitoba reserves as a task force reports that 61 per cent of the people with active COVID-19 in the province are First Nations.
Manitoba’s First Nation COVID-19 pandemic response team says as of Monday there were 1,578 active COVID-19 cases on reserves and 514 in off-reserve First Nations populations.
First Nations now account for 40 per cent of new infections while making up about 10 per cent of the overall Manitoba population.
About 5,300 doses of the Moderna vaccine were reserved for Indigenous people in Manitoba. It can be stored and transported more easily than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The province said all 63 First Nations will receive a portion, but the first shipments are heading to communities with personal care homes. A second shipment of doses is expected by Feb. 23.

A COVID-19 outbreak at a First Nation reserve near London, Ont., has grown to 33 cases.
Middlesex-London Health Unit says an outbreak at the Oneida Long-Term Care Home was declared on Jan. 5.
The health unit’s medical officer of health says COVID-19 vaccinations were given at the reserve’s long-term care home today.
Dr. Chris Mackie says the health unit first launched the on-site vaccination at Oneida because of Indigenous communities’ vulnerability to the virus.
Oneida Nation of the Thames has implemented a community-wide 8 p.m. curfew on Sunday and says the measures will be in place for at least two weeks.
Chief Adrian Chrisjohn says fines of $750 are imposed on anyone hosting social gatherings.

A laboratory in Hamilton has apologized after 31 people received incorrect COVID-19 test results because of what it called a processing error.
The Hamilton Regional Laboratory Medicine Program says everyone who received incorrect results has been contacted and the error has been addressed.
Hamilton Health Services, which operates the lab with St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, says 16 people who tested positive initially received a negative result.
And it says 15 people who didn’t have COVID-19 were told they had tested positive.
The tests processed at the lab were collected in Hamilton, Burlington, Ont., and other surrounding areas on Dec. 30 and 31.
Hamilton’s public health unit says the error in its daily case counts has since been altered to reflect the accurate information.

The Ontario government is expected to announce new COVID-19 measures and updated projections for the pandemic’s progression over the next several weeks.
The premier hasn’t indicated what the new rules could be, but he has previously suggested the current provincial lockdown may need to be extended past its original end date of Jan. 23.
Last month the province said if COVID-19 case rates continued to grow between one and three per cent, the province would have 3,000 to 5,000 daily cases by the end of January.
Ontario has reported more than 3,000 cases daily for the last week, with 3,338 new cases reported Monday as well as 29 new deaths.
The province has now recorded more than 5,000 deaths as a result of COVID-19.