There are 391 people in hospital with the virus, including three in intensive care.
Today's community cases are in Northland (91), Auckland (1250), Waikato (257), Bay of Plenty (157), Lakes (46), Hawke's Bay (114), MidCentral (113), Whanganui (50), Taranaki (112), Tairāwhiti (22), Wairarapa (47), Capital and Coast (388), Hutt Valley (190), Nelson Marlborough (168), Canterbury (594), South Canterbury (60), Southern (336), West Coast (28), unknown (1).
There are also 53 new imported cases, the ministry said in today's update.
The 391 patients in hospital are in Northland: 9, Waitematā: 43, Counties Manukau: 46, Auckland: 60, Waikato: 23, Bay of Plenty: 18, Lakes: 1, Tairāwhiti: 3, Hawke's Bay: 6, Taranaki: 18, Whanganui: 5, MidCentral: 30, Wairarapa: 0, Hutt Valley: 31, Capital and Coast: 21, Nelson Marlborough: 7, Canterbury: 41, South Canterbury: 4, West Coast: 0, Southern: 25.
The ministry has also provided advice as influenza and winter illnesses pick up.
"We are continuing to remind people of the importance of not only protecting against Covid-19 but also protecting against influenza and other winter ills and chills."
They are asking Kiwis to:
• Stay at home if unwell
• Take a Covid test if symptomatic
• Wear a face mask
• Maintain good hygiene
• Sneeze and cough into your elbow or a tissue
• Develop a whānau winter plan
• Get a winter wellness kit together
• Eat well and stay active
• Keep up to date with Covid-19 vaccinations
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told RNZ today that the flu is now a greater cause of respiratory hospitalisation in some Auckland hospitals than Covid-19.
She said hospitals, particularly in Counties Manukau, were currently experiencing significant pressure.
"Here I have an ask for the public, please get your flu vaccine, please wear your mask, it's not only helpful for Covid it's helpful for flu and please if your issues are non-acute but you do need medical attention, do also make use of Healthline."
Ardern was questioned on if the Government was considering raising the Covid traffic light setting back to red.
"When you think about back when we changed to the orange settings, then we were looking at roughly a rolling average of 10,000 cases, we had over 500 hospitalisations, you know close to 30 in ICU.
"Our rolling average now is under 5000 cases, we've got about, what did we have yesterday - about 350 in hospital and five in ICU."
Yesterday there were 3235 new cases in the community and a further five Covid-related deaths were reported.
There were 356 people in hospital with the virus, including five in intensive care.
The seven-day rolling average of daily community case numbers was 4991, last Sunday it was 5919.
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."
