Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: 6 deaths, 1653 new cases

There are 1653 new cases of Covid-19 and 341 people in hospital with the virus. Three people are in ICU.

A further six Covid-related deaths have been reported.

One person was in their 60s, one was in their 70s, two were in their 80s and two were aged over 90.

Five were women and one was male.

Four of the people whose deaths were reported today were from Auckland, one was from the Wellington region and one was from the Southern region.

There is now a total 1869 deaths that have been confirmed as attributable to Covid-19 (either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor).

The seven-day rolling average increase in total deaths attributable to Covid-19 is now six.

The Ministry of Health no longer provides daily Covid-19 updates on Saturday and Sunday, and has published the daily case numbers for those days today.

On Sunday, 1304 cases were detected in New Zealand.

On Saturday, there were 2141 cases identified.

Of the 1653 cases reported today, 96 people had recently travelled overseas.

The seven-day rolling average of cases today is 2425 – last Monday it was 3655.

The weekly hospitalisation average today is 351; last Monday it was 472.

The locations of the cases in hospital are Northland (six), Waitematā (61), Counties Manukau (30), Auckland (53), Waikato (42), Bay of Plenty (nine), Lakes (eight), Hawke's Bay (10), MidCentral (12), Whanganui (two), Taranaki (four), Tairawhiti (two), Wairarapa (five), Capital & Coast (16), Hutt Valley (seven), Nelson Marlborough (10), Canterbury (44), West Coast (two), South Canterbury (eight) and Southern (10).

New Zealand's Covid case numbers are the lowest they have been since February.

This comes as spring is now on our doorstep and winter on its way out.

It does give the country some confidence that New Zealand will enter the warmer months when people will spend more time outside with a lower level of virus circulating in the community.

People can hope that a new Omicron strain or some new variant won't set this country and the rest of the world backwards. Being prepared for one anyway is important as the current crisis eases. There are also still background issues to deal with.

The ministry also announced last week that long Covid will now be tracked with a new coding tool.

It said clinicians around the country were being given the tools to record people diagnosed with long Covid, to help provide a clearer picture of the impact of the condition over time.

Clinical codes had been developed for hospital-level care for patients with "ongoing symptomatic Covid-19" and "post Covid-19 syndrome".

These codes were currently being rolled out across all medical record IT systems used in primary care.