Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: 4818 new cases, 571 people in hospital and 24 virus-related deaths

There are 4818 new cases of Covid-19 today and a further 24 Covid-related deaths have been reported by health officials.

One person was aged in their 60s, one was in their 70s, 13 were in their 80s and nine were aged over 90. Sixteen were women and eight were men.

Two of these people were from Northland, five were from Auckland region, one was from Waikato, one was from Bay of Plenty, one was from Lakes, four were from MidCentral, two were from Wellington region, three were from Nelson Marlborough, four were from Canterbury, one was from Southern.

There are now a total of 1726 deaths confirmed as attributable to Covid-19, either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor. In the past seven days there have been an average of 12 deaths confirmed each day as being attributable to Covid-19.

There are 571 people with Covid in hospitals across the country, including 13 who are receiving intensive care treatment.

They are in Northland (24), Waitematā (59), Counties Manukau (48), Auckland (70), Waikato (61), Bay of Plenty (24), Lakes (13), Hawke's Bay (36), MidCentral (16), Whanganui (12), Taranaki (11), Tairāwhiti (two), Wairarapa (nine), Capital & Coast (14), Hutt Valley (15), Nelson Marlborough (12), Canterbury (95), West Coast (three), South Canterbury (19) and Southern (28).

The weekly average of Covid-19 hospitalisations today is 617; this time last week it was 748.

There are currently 33,230 active cases of the virus in the country.

Of today's 4818 new cases, 204 had recently travelled overseas.

The seven-day rolling average of cases today is 4750, last Thursday it was 6142.

The number of active Covid cases has dropped to a level not seen since Omicron arrived in New Zealand, with the rolling weekly average of cases dipping beneath 5000 daily.

The variant's second wave continues to recede with community cases, hospitalisations and deaths all falling.

This week the Covid Response Minister Ayesha Verrall said the country would remain in the orange traffic light setting through winter, noting while case numbers were declining there was "still high" pressure on the health system due to Covid-19 and other illnesses.

"There's still significant pressure on hospitals from winter illnesses, so our current measures have an ongoing role to play in reducing the number of Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations," said Verrall.

"The health system usually sees elevated pressure through September, so we would be hoping to see some sustained reductions in both cases and hospitalisations then.

"Our response to Omicron is moving in the right direction, but loosening settings before we are completely on top of it risk infections going up again. We just need to stay the course a little longer."

There would also be no changes to case isolation and household contact quarantine requirements. The next review setting will be in September.

She said the current wave appeared to have peaked with a daily infection rate of around 11,000 new cases a day in mid-July.

Auckland University infectious disease expert modeller Dr David Welch said while new community cases were expected to fall they would likely plateau at around 3000 a day in until the next variant arrived and sent numbers skyward once more.