PHIMS is a secure, integrated electronic public health record designed to assist public health practitioners in Manitoba with management of:
PHIMS provides authorized health-care professionals in Manitoba with the ability to collect, share and analyze a wide range of health information at the regional and provincial levels. Data from PHIMS are used in a range of public reports.
The PHIMS database is refreshed daily at 1:00am.
Confirmed case – A person with a laboratory confirmation of infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 or seasonal influenza performed at a community, hospital or reference laboratory (NML or a provincial public health laboratory) running a validated assay. This consists of detection of at least one specific gene target by a NAAT assay (e.g. real-time PCR or nucleic acid sequencing).
Viruses like the ones that cause COVID-19 are constantly changing through mutation. New variants occur over time; sometimes the new variants emerge and disappear while others last. It is not unexpected to see cases of COVID-19 linked to VOCs in Manitoba.
Please visit https://manitoba.ca/asset_library/en/coronavirus/interim_guidance.pdf for more information.
Cumulative data includes updates from start of the current season to end of the reporting week; due to reporting delays or amendments, the sum of weekly report totals may not add up to cumulative totals.
The date the laboratory specimen was collected is used to assign cases to the epidemiological week in this report. Occasionally, if the specimen collection date is not available, the laboratory report date is used. If both dates are not available, the earliest date a case was reported to Public Health is be used.
Incidence rate measures the frequency that a disease occurs in a population. It is calculated as the total number of new cases multiplied by 10,000 and divided by the total count in a population based on the provincial mid-year population file in 2021.
ILI is defined as acute onset of respiratory illness with fever and cough and with one or more of the following - sore throat, arthralgia, myalgia, or prostration.
Hospitalizations and ICU submissions in laboratory confirmed COVID-19 and influenza cases are extracted from the provincial data system, Admission, Discharge and Transmission. Due to a need for timely reporting, hospitalizations and ICU submissions do not need to be directly attributed to COVID-19 or influenza. Instead an association to a positive COVID-19 or influenza laboratory result is sufficient. Duplicate submissions for the same patient within the same illness episode are excluded. In this report, only Manitoba residents are included. ICU admissions are also included in hospitalizations.
COVID-19 and influenza associated deathsCOVID-19 and influenza associated deaths are defined as all laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 or influenza cases who have died 30 days after the earliest specimen collection date in the most recent investigation; or where COVID-19 or influenza infection was diagnosed post-mortem. Note that the reason for death does not have to be attributable to COVID-19 or influenza. A positive laboratory test is sufficient for reporting.
Provincial data about COVID-19 related tests are collected daily from Cadham Provincial Laboratory, Shared Health, and Dynacare.
Provincial testing data about other respiratory pathogens including seasonal influenza are collected weekly from the national Respiratory Virus Detections in Canada webpage.
FluWatch is an important part of Canada's national influenza surveillance program. It relies on an online health surveillance system that helps track the spread of influenza and influenza-like illness in the community across Canada. FluWatchers are volunteers from all over Canada. Each week, FluWatchers get an e-mail asking if they had a cough or fever in the previous week. Additional questions may be asked if participants reported ILI symptoms. Answers are anonymous.
Manitoba data are included in this report.
FluWatch typically tracks information related to influenza, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus is shifting to tracking COVID-19 over the spring and summer months.
More volunteers are needed across Canada to help track the spread of influenza and COVID-19. Please consider signing up to be a FluWatcher.
Manitoba participates in FluWatch, Canada's national surveillance system coordinated by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which monitors the spread of influenza and ILI on a year-round basis. FluWatch consists of a network of laboratories, hospitals, physician clinics and provincial and territorial ministries of health. In 2019-2020, there were 19 sentinel physicians recruited throughout Manitoba reporting to FluWatch weekly. The Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit receives weekly reports from FluWatch, which describe the ILI rate for Manitoba and for each participating sentinel physician. The reporting sentinel physicians vary by week, and their reports may not be representative of ILI activity across the province.
Daily statistics of visits to Emergency Departments (ED) and Urgent Care including all visits and those related to respiratory illness are submitted to the Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit weekly. Respiratory visits are defined as patients whose triage chief complaints contain one or more of these symptoms: weakness, shortness of breath, cough, headache, fever, cardiac/respiratory arrest, sore throat, and upper respiratory tract infection complaints.
The units of antiviral drugs, Oseltamivir and Zanamivor, dispensed from community retail pharmacies to Manitoba residents are reported to E&S from Drug Programs Information Network (DPIN) on a weekly basis. Antiviral drugs dispensed to in-patients or through nursing stations could not be included in this report due to lack of data.
COVID-19 coverage rate: Percent of the Manitoba population who were vaccinated during the fall campaign (September to February) and within the last six months of the current year.
Numerator: Number of Manitobans who were vaccinated during the fall campaign (September to February) and within the last six months of the current year with SARS-CoV-2 antigen.
Denominator: All Manitobans registered for health care in Manitoba as of June 1.
Limitations:
Influenza coverage rate: percent of the Manitoba population who were vaccinated for influenza between September 1 and May 31.
Numerator: Number of Manitobans who were vaccinated between September 1 and May 31 (flu season) for the current and previous flu seasons with the following antigens:
Denominator: All Manitobans registered for health care in Manitoba as of June 1.
Limitations:
Respiratory outbreaks - the number of outbreaks for COVID-19, influenza and other respiratory disease as defined by the following protocols.
Data sources – Prior to July 2023 Manitoba outbreak data was extracted and reported using the Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence (CNPHI) application. As of January 2022 Manitoba implemented an outbreak module within the Public Health Information System (PHIMS) which includes information reported through CNPHI.
Limitations – In general, only institutional outbreaks require management and community outbreaks are not typically monitored and more than one outbreak can occur in a single facility. Due to a change in data collection tools and outbreak protocols the number of outbreaks may not be comparable over time. Currently, Winnipeg region is not documenting acute care outbreaks in PHIMS; as result the total number may be an undercount. Data and trends should be interpreted with caution.