Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: 10 deaths, 930 people in hospital, more than 19,500 Covid cases today

Ten Covid-related deaths were announced today.

There are 19,566 new community cases of Covid-19 and 930 people in hospital, including 23 in intensive care.

Of the people that died, one person was in their 30s, one in their 50s, three in their 70s, two in their 80s and two in their 90s. Four were women and five were men. Information for the 10th death was not available.

Northern Region Health Coordination Centre chief clinical officer Dr Andrew Old - who provided today's Covid update - said 618 of those hospitalised were in Auckland.

Ten of the 23 people in intensive care were in Auckland.

Old said one-third of admissions in the Northern Region clearly had Covid as the reason for their admission.

Pressure continued to mount on hospitals as hospitalisation rates remained high, he said.

Prior to Covid's spread, hospitals across the Northern region were already running about 15 per cent under ideal staffing levels, Old said.

On any given day, staffing levels were now down a further 10 per cent due to Covid issues.

While it was great to see the number of Covid cases decreasing in Auckland, the city was "not out of the woods yet" and risks from the outbreak remained high, Old said.

Old said reporting negative RAT results was important as it provided important information to indicate where the country was in terms of the outbreak.

As well as protecting yourself, being vaccinated was an important step to protect vulnerable people, including younger people who can't be vaccinated and those with underlying health conditions, Old said.

He also reminded people of the importance of other vaccinations, such as the flu vaccine or childhood immunisations, with winter just around the corner.

Middlemore's emergency department clinical director Dr Vanessa Thornton said Covid sought and found unvaccinated people, and also urged everyone to get vaccinated and to get a booster shot.

Thornton said there were people who have stayed much longer than others in hospital, including longer than seven to 10 days.

She said people came into hospital for a range of reasons, including for underlying conditions.

With respect to Covid or lung infections that can come as a result of that, there were steroids and antivirals used to treat this, she said.

"From our side, we see the people that are sick in the hospital and we do see the sickest of the people and that's why we are trying to recommend people get vaccinated to avoid coming into hospital," she said.

There was the ability to treat more people - including expanding to further wards - if needed, she said.

There had been a chronic shortage of staff and the Omicron outbreak had added more stress to that situation, she said.

Thornton said about 10 per cent of staff had been off for Covid-related reasons.

Staff had been redeployed from other areas, she said, so minimum services could be maintained.

On staff absences and whether they had plateaued, she said she believed they were at a "steady state".

Some staff had come to assist in the emergency department, for which Thornton said the team were very thankful.

Moving into winter, other illnesses will come from overseas into New Zealand, but hopefully practices like proper hand hygiene and flu vaccines would prevent it, she said.

Old said it was not possible to get to 100 per cent vaccination rates but if they could get the population very close to that figure it would help set things up for winter.

On the $500 bonuses for certain staff reported by the Herald earlier today, he said they were put in for a two-week period to cover extreme circumstances.

It was really a way to focus on those critical, hard to fill shifts such as overnights, he said.

They had been asking people to go above and beyond, and now they were asking staff to go "above and beyond, beyond", he said.

The number of cases that were staff were seeming to come down and he hoped the situation would start to ease, he said.

Asked about concern regarding Māori making up a quarter of all Covid-related deaths, Old said every death was a tragedy and, because the outbreak started in Auckland, cases and deaths did represent the make-up of the community.

Across the board, Māori had poorer health outcomes for a wide variety of reasons and staff were working with Māori and Pacific community partners to get vaccination rates up.

The single biggest thing everyone could do to prevent Māori, Pacific and other vulnerable groups from having severe outcomes was to support those groups to get vaccinated, he said.

Thornton said if another ward at Middlemore was needed to treat Covid patients, they would convert one and introduce infection and control measures. It meant one ward would be converted to another.

Thornton said most of the people who were in ICU for Covid was related to pneumonitis.

Today's update

Today's deaths take the total of Covid-related deaths to 151, and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths to eight.

Deaths had been recorded in Northland (one), Auckland (five), Bay of Plenty (one), Hawke's Bay (one) and Hutt Valley (one).

The location of the 10th death was not listed.

Of today's 930 reported cases in hospital, there are 250 in Middlemore, 202 in Auckland, 170 on the North Shore, 66 in the Waikato, 43 in Capital and Coast, 35 in the Bay of Plenty, 30 in Canterbury, 23 in Hawke's Bay, 16 in Mid Central and Southern, 11 in Nelson Marlborough, 10 in Taranaki, and a small number of other cases across the other DHBs.

The average age of the current hospitalisations is 58.

More than 4 million people have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, 3.97 million have had their second, and over 34,000 have had a third primary dose.

The ministry also reported more than 2.5 million Kiwis have had a booster dose: 96.7 per cent of the eligible population have had their first dose, 95.4 per cent their second and 72.9 per cent have had a booster shot.

Just over 53 per cent of eligible 5 to 11-year-olds (521,304 people) have received one Covid-19 vaccine dose, while 4.1 per cent have had their second.

Yesterday's numbers

Of the deaths announced yesterday, eight people with Covid-19 died on Tuesday and 16 people died in the past three weeks.

The ministry was notified of these deaths by local health authorities in the past 24 hours as part of changes to the reporting of deaths that was announced last week.

Delays in reporting could be associated with people dying with, rather than of Covid-19, and the virus being discovered after the person had died.

The Herald revealed today that Auckland nurses and midwives are being offered a $500 bonus for every night shift they work to help hospitals combat severe staffing shortages amid Omicron.

One nurse said there was concern among staff that the extra shifts they were picking up were leaving them exhausted and potentially jeopardising patient care.

All nurses, midwives and other hospital support staff employed by Auckland, Waitematā or Counties Manukau DHB, who worked a full eight-hour night shift had been given an extra $500 allowance on top of the amount they would usually get under the multi-employer collective agreement.

If they worked overtime - which equated to more than an eight-hour shift or 80 hours a fortnight - staff received an additional $250, the Waitematā DHB document showed.

Nurses Society of New Zealand director David Wills said the added $500 was a significant bonus which showed how desperate they were for staff. He said he couldn't recall that amount being offered before.

"We are so short-staffed in every department that management are working on the floor. All departments are struggling," a nurse from Waitematā DHB said.

In her ward, she said seven to 10 staff were sick with Covid every day.

Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning, director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield rejected any claim the health system was in crisis but said health staff were feeling under pressure with 15 to 20 per cent of the workforce down with Covid.

He said two-thirds of those in hospital with Covid-19 were there because of virus symptoms or because it had exacerbated an underlying illness.

The other third were presenting to hospital under other circumstances, such as for injuries or maternal care.

There were currently nearly 1000 people in hospitals with Covid.

Bloomfield confirmed Auckland had reached its Omicron peak but said other regions of New Zealand may not have reached that point.

Yesterday, there were 19,542 new community cases of Covid-19 and 971 people in hospital - including 21 in intensive care.

They were spread across Northland (661), Auckland (5318), Waikato (1834), Bay of Plenty (1347), Lakes (584), Hawke's Bay (1049), MidCentral (802), Whanganui (231), Taranaki (663), Tairāwhiti (370), Wairarapa (208), Capital and Coast (1308), Hutt Valley (780), Nelson Marlborough (487), Canterbury (2385), South Canterbury (184), Southern (1203) and the West Coast (30). The location of seven cases was unknown.