Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: 5296 cases today as expert predicts daily cases to dip to low thousands

There are 5296 new Covid-19 community cases and 19 virus-related deaths today.

The Ministry of Health says there are 605 people in hospital, 17 of which are in ICU.

The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers is 5812, down from last Friday when it was 7618.

The ministry said there were now 1624 deaths confirmed as attributable to Covid-19, either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor.

The seven-day rolling average increase in total deaths is now 20.

The spread across New Zealand of cases in hospital is: Northland: 22; Waitematā: 62; Counties Manukau: 51; Auckland: 87; Waikato: 65; Bay of Plenty: 26; Lakes: 15; Hawke's Bay: 24; MidCentral: 24; Whanganui: 8; Taranaki: 18; Tairāwhiti: 2; Wairarapa: 3; Capital & Coast: 24; Hutt Valley: 12; Nelson Marlborough: 21; Canterbury: 90; West Coast: 5; South Canterbury: 19 and Southern: 27.

The average age of those receiving hospital-level care is 66-years-old.

The seven-day rolling average of hospitalisations is 721, down from 796 a week ago.

Of today's new community cases, 209 people had recently travelled overseas.

There are now 40,673 active cases in the community - the lowest figure in weeks.

The ministry said today there were 11,364 Rapid Antigen Tests and 3,381 PCR tests in the last 24 hours.

Covid expert's second wave warning

The numbers come as an infectious diseases modeller says there are likely to be thousands of new Omicron cases every day for the foreseeable future - until the current second wave subsides until a new variant emerges.

Auckland University computer science senior lecturer Dr David Welch said unlike the eradication of the earlier Covid-19 variants in 2020 and 2021 Omicron would stay in the community until it was superseded by a new strain.

And despite the second wave having peaked earlier than expected, New Zealand was unlikely to see the virus eradicated or even fall to hundreds of new cases a day. Instead it would "trickle on" in the thousands until the next wave.

"We're not going to get down to those levels. I think it'll be similar to the first peak we had. We had a plateau pretty much and that's what you're seeing around the world. The infection finds people who either haven't been infected before or who have waning immunity and that kind of trickles on.

"There's been quite a lot more people infected in this second wave so the number of people out there who can maintain the plateau is lower. We expect that plateau to be lower this time but it's still in the thousands."

Welch said the plateau would likely be a meaningfully lower than the first wave, getting down to 3000 a day.

Auckland University's Dr David Welch is forecasting Omicron cases to continue in the community until a new variant emerges. Photo / Jed Bradley

However, this would all change once a new variant arrived across our border.

"I also expect new variants to arrive at some point and start us up back in the other direction," said Welch.

The name of the game at this stage was to avoid contracting the virus for as long as possible and if you did get it, to avoid reinfection.

Those who had managed to avoid getting Covid were now at a little more risk of getting it in the next wave and people needed to maintain their immunity where they could through boosters, he said.

The vaccine had proved effective preventing infection and transmission against the Delta strain but unfortunately it hadn't been updated to counter the Omicron variant.

This meant we would not be in the same situation where the virus was all but eliminated from the community, he said.

Yesterday the Ministry of Health reported 6152 new cases of Covid-19 and 49 virus-related deaths, including two people in their 20s.

The number of patients in hospital being treated for Covid continued dropping to 663 and the head of the Public Health Agency announced case rates were starting to trend down, with an 18 per cent fall in the past week.