Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield did not make an appearance today, as the Ministry of Health sent out a press release rather than a conducting a live media briefing. Photo / File
Northland's Covid-19 case numbers are holding at 27 as the national tally increased by 13 positive cases today.
In a Ministry of Health media release, it outlined New Zealand had a further eight confirmed and five probable cases - taking the nation's total number of cases to 1422.
Nationally, 20 people were in hospital with three in intensive care, two of whom were in a critical condition.
As at 8am today, a Northland Māori man in his 70s was in Whangārei Hospital in a stable condition.
A total of 2738 tests had been carried out in Northland to date across primary care, DHB hospitals and community-based testing centres - the latter conducting 2049 across seven sites.
Head to the end of the article for more information on the centres.
Nationally, there were no further deaths to report as 51 more cases had recovered, bringing the total of recovered cases to 867.
As it was yesterday, there were still 16 significant clusters, with seven more cases being connected to those clusters.
Yesterday, a record number of 4677 Covid-19 tests were processed, taking the national total to 79,078.
The Ministry also confirmed targeted testing (used to determine whether there is any undetected community transmission has taken place) had been conducted in Queenstown, Waikato, Canterbury, and was taking place in Auckland today.
All tests processed from the Queenstown supermarket site returned a negative result.
In Waikato, 308 people were tested across Otorohanga, Hamilton, Matamata, Cambridge, and Te Awamutu. Those tests also returned negative results.
All tests processed to date from the community testing in Canterbury were also negative.
In Auckland testing began at 8am today at two supermarkets with the aim to collect 150 swabs at each site.