Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: 2780 new cases, 20 Covid-related deaths

There are 2780 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today.

There are 336 people in hospital with the virus, including six in intensive care.

There are also a further 20 deaths.

Of those deaths reported today: five were from Northland, two were from Auckland region, four were from Waikato, two were from Taranaki, four were from MidCentral, three were from Canterbury.

One was in their 30s, two were in their 60s, eight were in their 70s, six were in their 80s and three were aged over 90. Of these people, 13 were women and seven were men.

This brings the total number of deaths confirmed as attributable to Covid-19 up to 1845.

The seven-day rolling average increase in total deaths attributable to the virus is now seven.

"These newly reported deaths have not yet been categorised as to whether they are attributable to Covid-19, either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor or are unrelated to Covid-19. As this categorisation is made over coming days, the attributable deaths will be added to the total reported above."

There are currently 21,420 active cases in the community. Of today's cases, 142 had recently travelled overseas.

The seven-day rolling average of community cases is 3061, last Thursday it was 3930.

Today's hospitalisations included Northland: 5; Waitematā: 43; Counties Manukau: 26; Auckland: 53; Waikato: 58; Bay of Plenty: 10; Lakes: 10; Hawke's Bay: 17; MidCentral: 15; Whanganui: 1; Taranaki: 8; Tairawhiti: 0; Wairarapa: 8; Capital & Coast: 13; Hutt Valley: 14; Nelson Marlborough: 8; Canterbury: 37; West Coast: 1; South Canterbury: 1; Southern: 8.

The seven-day rolling average of hospitalisations today is 416 – last Thursday it was 527.

Winter Illness Update

Today the ministry has provided a winter illness update.

In the week to 21 August, 67 people were in Auckland and Counties Manukau hospitals for SARI illness (severe acute respiratory infection).

Human Metapneumovirus was detected in 55 per cent of those tested, rhinovirus in 38 per cent, SARS-CoV-2 in 10 per cent, and influenza in 1.6 per cent, they said.

"Other causes of infection, where known, were enteroviruses, adenoviruses, RSV, parainfluenza virus and RSV.

"The current rate of hospitalisations in Auckland and Counties Manukau is in line with rates seen in pre-Covid-19 years," they said.

1pm Covid-19 Updates

The ministry said the 1pm Covid-19 updates are being fine-tuned from tomorrow.

"The daily 1pm COVID-19 update is being fine-tuned to reflect the level of data provided daily on the Ministry of Health website," they said.

"The key changes are that the update will now be produced from Monday to Friday and information about the COVID-19 vaccine response, already provided on the website each day during the week, will no longer be included in the daily 1pm update."

Over 4 million Kiwis have had at least one dose of the vaccine and 2,718,389 have received the first booster dose.

In the past 24 hours, 3141 PCR tests and 8128 rapid antigen tests were processed.

Mortality Rate

An analysis has revealed that New Zealand's pandemic response has left it with one of the lowest excess mortality rates in the world as the country's cases, including hospitalisations, continue to decrease.

In a commentary published yesterday, researchers Dr Jennifer Summers, Professor Nick Wilson, Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, Dr Julie Bennett, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig and Professor Michael Baker compared our mortality rates against five other high-income jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific region.

They were Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which used a mix elimination and "suppression" to force down infection rates before being overwhelmed by Omicron.

Like New Zealand, all of those jurisdictions used these tough strategies to keep the virus at bay while they vaccinated as much of their populations as possible.

Across the entire pandemic period, New Zealand had minus 215 excess deaths per million, which equated to around 1103 fewer people dying than in a scenario in which the Covid-19 crisis never happened.

If we'd experienced a similar per capita excess mortality rate with other jurisdictions, then the country may have seen 1856 extra deaths (Japan), or 2127 (Taiwan), 2577 (Australia), 3798 (Singapore) or 5167 (South Korea).

Remarkably, there were only nine jurisdictions on the planet which had recorded negative cumulative excess mortality for the pandemic period, of which New Zealand was the largest.

They noted, however, that the ongoing toll from Omicron here was gradually decreasing the magnitude of that reduction - and Baker has previously pointed out the virus has become one of our leading causes of death.

"New Zealand used the elimination strategy to keep mortality low throughout the earlier part of the pandemic, allowing time for development and delivery of vaccines before widespread Covid-19 circulation," the experts said.

"However, there still remain areas in which the pandemic response and management could be significantly improved to reduce the ongoing morbidity and mortality burden, and to protect health workers and health systems."

Meanwhile, 1 News reported that New Zealand police spent $3.7 million in response to the anti-mandate protest at Parliament in February.

This figure was obtained under the Official Information Act which also revealed that police spent over $1 million on accommodation, $1 million on staff expense claims, $670,000 on travel, $290,000 on food, nearly $500,000 on hire equipment and $125,000 was spent on external providers and other costs.

The information released also shows that 1802 of the 2309 police deployments were from stations outside of the Wellington district and there were 152 injuries among police staff - including broken bones, burns, poisoning, open wounds and concussions.