There are 22,454 new Covid-19 cases in the community on Wednesday, the Ministry of Health has announced.
The ministry said four people with Covid-19 have died.
Two deaths had occurred in the Lakes DHB area, one in Tairāwhiti and one in Counties Manukau.
"Our thoughts and condolences are with the patients' family and friends," the ministry said in a statement.
"Out of respect, we will be making no further comment."
There are 742 people in hospital with the virus, including 19 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.
The ministry said the number of people in hospital with the virus remains steady, with 19 people now in an intensive care or high dependency unit.
The ministry said this represents 2.5 per cent of current hospitalisations. They are also around one fifth of the rate seen at the peak of the Delta outbreak, when 13 per cent of hospitalised people required ICU or HDU care.
Wednesday's 22,454 positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RAT) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (716), Auckland (8529), Waikato (2109), Bay of Plenty (1427), Lakes (633), Hawke’s Bay (707), MidCentral (655), Whanganui (202), Taranaki (536), Tairāwhiti (373), Wairarapa (166), Capital and Coast (1879), Hutt Valley (1062), Nelson Marlborough (452), Canterbury (2024), South Canterbury (120), Southern (835) and West Coast (20).
The locations of nine of the cases is unknown.
There are 8529 new cases being reported in the Auckland region, with the ministry signalling daily virus cases may have peaked in the region.
"Recent analysis shows that in the week from February 27 to March 5, 56 per cent of the total new cases were in the Auckland region. This is down from 61 per cent in our previous analysis, which covered the period from February 24 to March 2. This number is still high, and the outbreak is still very active in the Auckland region, but numbers have levelled off recently. We will know in the next few days if this signals that the outbreak has peaked there."
The ministry said 21,896 of Wednesday's cases were detected through RAT and 558 through PCR tests. A total of 4719 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours.
The number of active community cases is 202,141. They were identified in the past 10 days but have not yet been classified as recovered.
Twelve new cases at the border were also announced on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, 23,894 community cases were recorded in New Zealand.
SHARE ME