Dr Ashley Bloomfield and deputy director general Dr Andrew Old provide
Covid-19 update. Video / Mark Mitchell
Today's Covid cases have dipped below the 10,000 mark, as another 32 deaths linked to the virus are reported today.
There are 9953 new community cases today. The Ministry of Health says 767 cases are in hospital, including 20 people in intensive care.
A further 32 Covid-related deaths have been reported: two were in their 60s, six were in their 70s, 11 were in their 80s and 13 were aged over 90.
Seven were from Northland; five were from the Auckland region, one was from Waikato, three were from Bay of Plenty, one was from Lakes, one was from Tairāwhiti, one was from Hawke's Bay, two were from Taranaki, one was from Wellington region, two were from Nelson Marlborough, two were from Canterbury and six were from the Southern region.
"This is a very sad time for whānau and friends and our thoughts and condolences are with them," the ministry said.
Of today's new cases, 383 people had recently travelled overseas.
Today's seven-day rolling average of cases is 9161, while this time last week it was 9826.
In total, there are 64,081 reported active cases of the virus.
The 32 deaths with Covid reported today had occurred since March 26.
On hospitalisations, today's seven-day average is 766 compared to 673 this time last week.
The average age of the cases in hospital is 66.
Those hospitalised with the virus are in Northland (26), Waitematā (84), Counties Manukau (58), Auckland (105), Waikato (70), Bay of Plenty (43), Lakes (21), Hawke's Bay (33), MidCentral (32), Whanganui (15), Taranaki (14), Tairāwhiti (five), Wairarapa (eight), Capital & Coast (31), Hutt Valley (19), Nelson Marlborough (15), Canterbury (130), West Coast (one), South Canterbury (11) and the Southern region (46).
The ministry provides the vaccination status of new hospital admissions for Auckland, Canterbury, Southern, Counties Manukau, Waikato, Capital & Coast, Waitemata and Northland DHB regions.
Of the new admissions, 58 people were either unvaccinated or not eligible, four were partially immunised, less than seven days from second dose or have only received one dose, 70 cases were double vaccinated at least seven days before being reported as a case and 378 cases had received booster at least seven days before being reported as a case.
Health authorities also updated hospitalisations because of winter illnesses.
Of the 75 people in Auckland and Counties Manukau hospitals for Sari illnesses (severe acute respiratory infection), Covid-19 was the cause of infection for 24 per cent, Human Metapneumovirus was the cause for 15 per cent and influenza was the cause for 11 per cent.
Other causes of infection, where known, were rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, adenoviruses, parainfluenza virus and RSV (12 per cent).
"The current rate of hospitalisations in Auckland and Counties Manukau is in line with rates seen in recent years."
On testing, the ministry reported that 4.5 million rapid antigen tests (RATs) had been dispersed across the country in the seven days to July 20.
A Covid expert says New Zealand's second Omicron wave is peaking earlier and lower than predicted.
University of Auckland senior lecturer in computational evolution Dr David Welch told the Herald initially he predicted this winter wave to reach its summit this week or next at between 15,000 to 20,000 daily infections, similar to figures seen in March.
Dr David Welch, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland's Centre for Computational Evolution and School of Computer Science. Photo / Jed Bradley
Now, Welch said data trends showed the country had already seen the peak at just over 10,000 community cases with peak hospitalisation rates expected to hit this weekend.
He had been tracking the seven-day rolling average of community cases, which seemed to peak last weekend before slowing decreasing.
"It's sometimes hard to call these things but the signal is pretty consistent that cases were climbing quite quickly and then they started increasing more slowly and now they are declining so it looks very much like a peak," he said.
While this was good news, Welch stressed it wasn't time to relax just yet.
"Although we appear to be past the peak, case numbers were still high so it's not time to relax yet, especially with the return to the school term in a few days.
"A lot of potentially infectious contact happens within our schools so that might slowly decline, we might see a long tail from this wave," Welch said.
Decline in case numbers looks baked in which is Good News -though still lots of infection out there for a few weeks. The peak has come earlier and lower than what I'd guessed, and low end of what models had it at. Points to difficulty of modeling when immune landscape is complex. pic.twitter.com/PxfpJaUpeA
In March, daily infections reached more than 20,000 and the number of people in hospital with the virus hit more than 1000.
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.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield this week strongly recommended schools introduce mask wearing for the first four weeks of the new term, which begins on Monday.
He said they were expecting an increase in cases and hospitalisations over the next six weeks.
"Case rates and wastewater results show cases are increasing across all regions in New Zealand."
He said there had been a "significant increase" in Covid cases because of the BA.5 variant.
Welch said he was a little bit puzzled by this but the main indicator Bloomfield had been looking at was hospitalisations increasing.
"Also the pressure of the hospital wasn't coming from Covid alone so I think there is going to be intense pressure on hospitals for the coming few weeks at least."
