All Black sidesteps Court appearance, how builders are working around the GIB shortage and the Government gets called out for spending too much in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
There are 6297 new Covid community cases in New Zealand today.
The Ministry of Health said it cannot report how many Covid-related deaths there were due to a "technical issue". It said it would update the Covid-related death numbers soon.
The ministry was also unable to report how many peopleare in hospital with Covid.
The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers, meanwhile, is now 6075 – last Friday it was 6850.
Currently, 2,645,477 or 78 per cent of the eligible population aged over 18 have had their booster vaccine dose.
The location of the new Covid cases are: Northland (154), Auckland (1822), Waikato (468), Bay of Plenty (213), Lakes (98), Hawke's Bay (168), MidCentral (273), Whanganui (82), Taranaki (178), Tairāwhiti (37), Wairarapa (53), Capital and Coast (623), Hutt Valley (298), Nelson Marlborough (252), Canterbury (935), South Canterbury (83), Southern (498) and West Coast (57).
The number of active Covid community cases has now risen to 42,517. These are cases identified in the last seven days and not yet classified as recovered.
In total, 1,222,199 Kiwis have been confirmed as having had Covid.
Meanwhile, health staff are warning a surge of patients is putting unprecedented pressure on our hospital system, despite Covid numbers being well down on their peak.
They're saying hospitals are at a "level of panic" at the start of winter, with record delays and record patient numbers.
Covid is not the primary cause but is adding to the stress, which is made worse by respiratory illnesses hitting earlier in winter than usual.
On Thursday, there were 7927 new community cases of Covid-19 reported. There were also 393 people in hospital with the virus, 12 of them in intensive care.
A further 27 Covid-related deaths were also reported yesterday. Twenty-two of those people had died in the past five days, and the other five had died since March 29.
Some of those contracting Covid are hospital staff, with large numbers calling in sick or isolating due to Covid exposure, among other causes.
Hospitals are delaying surgeries and are increasingly warning the situation is unsustainable, with extremely long waits at emergency departments.
Experts have warned this winter will be extremely difficult, as Kiwis lack immunity to viruses that are now circulating in the community.
Latest school Covid numbers published
The Ministry of Education has also released the latest Covid case numbers for schools.
The data is reported weekly based on schools' reports to the Ministry.
In the seven days to Thursday, there were 7370 new cases reported by schools across New Zealand. Of those cases, 6205 were students, 830 were teachers and 335 were other staff.
A total 700 schools - or 28 per cent of all schools - reported at least one case over the seven days to Thursday.
Another 877 cases were reported by early learning centres, with 8 per cent of centres managing at least one new case in the past week. That included 553 students, 240 teachers and 84 other people.
Across New Zealand, 15 per cent of schools have at least one teacher or principal with Covid, as do 3 per cent of early learning centres.
A graph provided by the Ministry of Education comparing Covid community cases and Covid cases reported in schools and ECEs. Source: MoE
