COVID-19 in Quebec: What you need to know Wednesday

• Quebec reported 989new caseson Wednesday and 34more deaths.
• Since the start of the pandemic, there have been272,726confirmed cases and10,112 people have died.
• There are 918people in hospital (a decrease of 22), including 148in intensive care (an increase of three).
• 3,174 doses ofvaccine were administered on Tuesday. A total of 266,590doses have been administered since Dec. 14, accounting for about threeper cent of the population.
• Businesses and other services are gradually reopening. Here's a list of what is open, and what is still closed.

There are currently 44 presumptiveor confirmedcases of the new, more contagious COVID-19 variants in the Montreal area,Dr. Mylne Drouin, Montreal's public health director, said Wednesday.

Of those cases,nine have been confirmed through laboratory sequencing, 23 have not yet been formally confirmed and 12 are epidemiologically linked, meaning those infections are thought to have been caught from someone with a confirmed variant case.

"I think we may be missing some [variant cases] at the time we're speaking," Drouin said.

One of the presumptive variant cases is included among over 40 infections in an outbreak atCollgeStanislas, a private school in the Outremont borough, Drouin said.

The variant in that instance is one that was initially discovered in the U.K., as are most of the other known variant cases in the city, she said.

Public health officials are trying to see if there is community transmission of the variants, Drouin said. She saidthe discovery of the variant case at Stanislas clearly "shows us there are areas that have been affected by a suspect case."

Theprovinceis also dealing with cases of transmissible variants of the coronavirus. On Tuesday, it announced two people living in Abitibi-Tmiscamingue tested positive for the variant first reported in South Africa.

Meanwhile, Premier Franois Legault says Quebecers will know more soon about the government's plan to prevent a surge in cases during March break.

Since the virus's first wave, the government has been reluctant to have roadblocks installed, but Legault acknowledged that they may be needed during that week.

"Usually, there's this kind of big soup, a big mix [of people] during March break," Legault said during Tuesday's news conference. "I want to repeat to parents that it's not the time to organize activities with other families, and it's also not the time to ask those who are 65 and older to babysit the kids."

If you have been feelingisolated, we'vecompiledsome ways to help cope as part ofa special CBC Quebec project calledOut of the Dark: Real Talk on Mental Health.

Out of the Dark: Small steps

4 years ago

Duration 1:00

It can be tough to know at what point struggling with sadness becomes more than you can bear on your own.

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