The school holidays haven't acted as the circuit breaker they were hoped to be with the seven-day rolling average of Covid cases increasing and health officials warning that the pandemic is set to worsen.
There are 10,320 new Covid cases today and 34 virus-related deaths.
There are 744 people in hospital with the virus, including 17 in intensive care.
There are 65,523 active cases.
Today's reported deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 1904 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 24.
Of the 34 deaths reported today 12 were from Auckland region, two were from Waikato, three were from Bay of Plenty, one was from Lakes, one was from Tairāwhiti, one was from Hawke's Bay, three were from Taranaki, three were from Whanganui, one was from Wellington region, three were from Nelson Marlborough, one was from Canterbury, three were from Southern.
Two were aged in their 50s, two were in their 60s, seven were in their 70s, 13 were in their 80s and 10 were aged over 90. Of these people, 17 were women and 17 were men.
The average age of those in hospital is 65.
The seven day rolling average for hospitalisations is 766, last Wednesday it was 643.
It was hoped that the school holidays would act as circuit breaker that stopped the spread of the virus.
However, on the first day of the school holidays the seven day rolling average was 9279 and yesterday it was 9367 - indicating that case numbers have remained high.
The beginning of the school holidays saw numbers drop below 10,000 for two days before rising again to over 10,000 for the next four days.
Numbers dropped off slightly again at the end of last week until yesterday's tally was revealed, again at over 10,000.
Schools battled with illness and staff shortages last term as the second wave of Omicron began to rear its head, on the last day of term there were 13,344 new cases in the community.
For the first four weeks of the new term, which begins on Monday, director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield strongly recommended schools introduce mask wearing.
He said they were expecting an increase in cases and hospitalisations over the next six weeks.
"Case rates and wastewater results shows cases are increasing across all regions in New Zealand."
He said there had been a "significant increase" in Covid cases due to the BA.5 variant.
This comes as changes to the way Covid-19 deaths are reported are made.
As of Friday, Covid deaths will now be reported with a focus on those people deemed to have died with Covid-19 as an underlying or contributing factor.
In the past, deaths associated to Covid-19 have been reported in a quite basic manner in that anyone who died within 28 days of having the virus was considered a "Covid death".
This often came with the proviso that the "underlying cause of death may have been unrelated to Covid-19", as per the Ministry of Health's website currently.
Health officials say the new system better encapsulates the toll the virus has taken on our communities, while also giving us a more useful tool to contrast New Zealand's management of Covid-19 against comparable countries.
On Monday, New Zealand had registered almost 1900 deaths (1870) of people under the old classification.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Health's public health agency deputy director Dr Andrew Old said the true number of Kiwis whose death was due to or contributed to by Covid-19 was 1252.
NZ Drug Foundation warns of increased cocaine harm.