A Covid-19 vaccination drive in Manukau. Photo / Alex Burton
For the first time in over four months Auckland's daily Covid-19 cases have dropped below 1000.
However, a Covid-19 expert says those numbers paint an imperfect picture, with hospitalisations plateauing at more than 350 and still a dozen people dying a day with the virus.
There were 3235 new community cases of Covid-19 reported across New Zealand today, continuing a slow decline in case numbers.
Today's daily total is the lowest since February 23 - a trend continued for the past week.
The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers today is 4991. Last Sunday it was 5919.
Across Auckland's three DHBs there were 990 cases reported on Sunday, the lowest daily total since February 16 when 861 cases were reported.
The Ministry of Health reported a further five Covid-related deaths. Today's reported deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 1406 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 12, slightly down from 13 a week ago.
There are 356 people in hospital with the virus - a number relatively constant since the beginning of May, including five in intensive care.
Epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker told the Herald it did look like case numbers overall were continuing a slow decline. However, weekend figures were often less reliable and with self-reporting of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) the numbers were less certain.
More accurate indicators were hospitalisation and death rates, which remained relatively constant for months now, with only slight declines.
Baker said this showed a potential equilibrium had been reached and with reports of hospitals being overwhelmed and schools unable to operate, functionally it indicated the systems were still being overloaded.
"Hopefully our central agencies are putting all of this together and looking at the types of controls we have in place."
Baker, as with many other experts, has been calling for a tightening of measures, particularly around mask use and an action plan for schools, to bring those daily rates further down.
"The mortality rate has been over a dozen a day for several months now, and we have another three months of winter. I think we are going to find that a very large burden, and it is going to touch every New Zealander."
Of the deaths reported today, two were from the Auckland region, one was from Hawke's Bay, one was from Nelson-Marlborough and one was from Canterbury.
Two people were in their 60s and three people were aged over 90. Of these people, two were women and three were men.
Today's new cases were detected in Northland (68), Auckland (991), Waikato (192), Bay of Plenty (100), Lakes (58), Hawke's Bay (92), MidCentral (98), Whanganui (41), Taranaki (88), Tairāwhiti (18), Wairarapa (35), Capital and Coast (302), Hutt Valley (151), Nelson Marlborough (152), Canterbury (503), South Canterbury (40), Southern (282) and West Coast (19).
Five were listed as unknown.
Today's hospitalisations are in Northland: 5; Waitematā: 41; Counties Manukau: 41; Auckland: 61; Waikato: 23; Bay of Plenty: 19; Lakes: 4; Tairāwhiti: 3; Hawke's Bay: 7; Taranaki: 10; Whanganui: 4; MidCentral: 29; Wairarapa: 0; Hutt Valley: 21; Capital and Coast: 19; Nelson Marlborough: 7; Canterbury: 35; South Canterbury: 3; Southern: 24.
The average age of current hospitalisations is 59.
There were 42 cases detected at the border.
There are 34,922 active cases. The country has so far had 1,266,659 cases overall.
There were 2443 PCR tests and 6834 RATs reported in the last 24 hours.
The data release comes as nursing unions warned on Saturday a severe shortage across the country was becoming a "crisis".
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation said the country's "horrendous" nursing shortage was leaving those in the sector burnt-out and worried they were being stretched too thinly to keep patients safe.