In the past week there have been 20,522 new cases of Covid-19 in the community, reports the Ministry of Health.
Of these, 2394 cases were reported in the last 24 hours.
The weekly cases reported today are up by more than 4000 compared to the previous week.
The seven-day rolling average of community cases is 2926 - last Monday it was 2333.
The number of active cases has not been this high since August 26 when there were 19,997 reported infections.
There has been a further 18 deaths.
Of the deaths reported today two were from Northland, three were from Auckland region, three were from Waikato, one was from Bay of Plenty, one was from Hawke’s Bay, one was from Wellington region, one was from Nelson Marlborough, four were from Canterbury, two were from Southern.
As of midnight yesterday, there were 323 people in hospital with the virus, including eight in intensive care.
The seven-day rolling average of deaths has decreased to two.
Of today’s community cases, 2483 were reinfections.
The latest data comes as Covid-19 modellers are warning that a peak in cases could be just weeks away if numbers began to rise rapidly like they did in June during the country’s second wave.
Cases began to track upwards from about the start of October – climbing from fewer than 1000 to around 3000 now.
Last Monday, they reported 16,399 new cases in the community for the week of October 17.
There were 243 people in hospital with the virus, including six in intensive care.
The ministry also reported a further 41 deaths attributable to Covid-19.
Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa modeller Dr Dion O’Neale said the general pattern his team expected to see was a peak either roughly comparable than our last – which topped out at just 10,000 daily cases - or smaller.
“This is largely due to the high number of people who have some immunity from past infection and vaccination.”
The “when”, meanwhile, depended on drivers.
“If case number continue to grow relatively slowly, compared with the previous two Omicron waves in Aotearoa, then we would expect a lower, slower peak with cases possibly not peaking until around the end of the year,” he said.
“However, if case numbers grow rapidly, like they did in June and July, then it may be only a matter of weeks before we see numbers peak.”
The detection of the subvariant BA2.75 is changing the way the virus in transmitted and is creeping up alongside a still-dominant BA.5, which fuelled our winter wave.
“Cases were decreasing from the BA.5 peak until the middle of September; since then, they have been increasing slowly, at a lower rate than the start of the previous two waves, with cases concentrated in older age groups,” said Dr Samik Datta, of Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa.
“In the coming weeks, we may continue to see a rise in cases due to BA2.75, which is fast-spreading and has been detected in a number of countries including India and the UK.”
Right now, modellers are placing New Zealand’s effective reproduction number – or how many others one infected person might pass the virus onto – at above one.
“We do not know whether the increasing cases are due to relaxation of Covid protection measures and changes in behaviour, or because of increased presence of variants that are better at evading our existing immunity, which means we do not know whether this increase will continue to ramp up or will start to drop off,” modeller Dr Emily Harvey said.
“It’s likely that it is a combination of both.”
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