There are 2846 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health has announced.
The cases are in Northland (36), Auckland (1802), Waikato (285), Bay of Plenty (86), Lakes (19), Hawke's Bay (25), MidCentral (25), Whanganui (19), Taranaki (26), Tairāwhiti (17), Wairarapa (2), Capital and Coast (84), Hutt Valley (25), Nelson Marlborough (77), Canterbury (105), South Canterbury (4) and Southern (206).
There are 143 people in hospital with the virus. One of those is in intensive care or a high dependency unit.
The number is up from 116 Covid-19 cases in hospital on Monday.
"With Omicron spreading rapidly in New Zealand, it is important everyone who is eligible gets a booster dose, which greatly reduces your chances of getting severely ill and requiring hospital care if you test positive for Covid-19," the ministry said in a statement.
"This will reduce Covid-19 hospitalisations and ensure there is capacity in our health system for anyone who needs care."
More than 27,770 booster vaccine doses were administered across the country on Monday.
It adds to a total of 4.01 million first doses in people aged over 12, 3.95 million second doses for those aged over 12, 32,553 third primary doses, 2.19 million booster doses, 229,583 paediatric first doses for children and 1962 paediatric second doses.
The ministry urged Kiwis that if it's been three months since a second dose to book in for a booster.
The ministry also continued to stress the importance of the right people being tested for Covid-19 - for the right reasons.
"Over the last week, a significant number of concerned people who don't need a test are going to get a test – those are people who don't have any Covid-19 symptoms and are not a contact of a case.
"People should only get tested if they have cold or flu symptoms, have been identified as a close contact of a case, or have been asked to get tested by a health official.
"We are anticipating continued high demand at our Covid-19 testing sites, so our request is to, please, be patient. Staff across the testing network are working tirelessly, to process tests and return results in a timely way. We would like to thank them for their recent mahi."
The ministry added that as demand for testing has grown, some Covid-19 test results in Auckland and Waikato were taking longer to process at laboratories.
"The use of rapid antigen testing, alongside PCR testing, will improve this process at a time of exceptional demand in Phase 2, provided the Community Testing Centre queues are freely available for those who really need a test," the ministry said.
On Monday 24,351 tests for the virus were processed in New Zealand.
Meanwhile, there were also 15 new Covid-19 cases to report at the border on Tuesday. One is from the United Arab Emirates, while the travel history of the remaining 14 is yet to be determined.
This means there has now been 35,771 confirmed Covid-19 cases in New Zealand since the pandemic began.
There are currently 18,628 active cases in the community.
On Monday there were 2365 cases in New Zealand.
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