There are 17,148 new Covid-19 cases in the community in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Tuesday.
The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.
There are 842 people in hospital with the virus, including 26 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.
This is a fall on Monday's hospitalisations of 861, with five more people in ICU compared with 24 hours ago.
The ministry also announced 34 Covid-related deaths. They had occurred over the past 10 days, but had only recently been notified to the ministry.
The ministry explained delays to reporting can be associated with people dying with, rather than of the virus, and Covid-19 being discovered after they have died.
Of the 34 people who have died, two each were from Northland and Hawke's Bay, 17 were from the Auckland region, two were from Waikato, one each were from Bay of Plenty, the Lakes DHB area and Southern DHB area, five were from the Wellington region and three were from Canterbury.
One person was in their 30s, one person was in their 50s, five were in their 60s, nine were in their 70s, seven were in their 80s and 11 were in their 90s.
Seventeen were male and 17 were female.
"Our thoughts and condolences are with their whānau and friends at this sad time. Out of respect, we will be making no further comment," the ministry said.
The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths to 303.
The seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is now 15.
Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said overseas experience showed deaths of people with Covid-19 tended to lag behind hospitalisation and case numbers.
"We expect the number of deaths reported will continue to fluctuate day to day but the seven-day rolling average to remain at similar levels for the coming weeks."
Tuesday's 17,148 positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (730), Auckland (2899), Waikato (1566), Bay of Plenty (967), Lakes (479), Hawke’s Bay (1015), MidCentral (910), Whanganui (447), Taranaki (706), Tairāwhiti (250), Wairarapa (210), Capital and Coast (1035), Hutt Valley (617), Nelson Marlborough (690), Canterbury (2816), South Canterbury (318), Southern (1404) and West Coast (79).
The location of 10 cases is unknown.
The ministry said 16,923 of Tuesday's cases were detected through RATs and 225 through PCR tests. A total of 2208 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 34,977 RAT results were reported.
The number of active community cases is 108,942. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.
The ministry said the seven-day rolling average of cases is 15,565, a fall from 16,102 on Monday.
The ministry said the increase on Tuesday in case numbers across most regions is not unexpected. It said lower testing and reporting is generally seen over weekends.
The ministry also noted it was "encouraging" the seven-day rolling average of cases had declined - 15,565 on Tuesday compared with 17,020 last Tuesday.
There are also 44 new cases at the border, the ministry announced on Tuesday.
On Monday, 12,882 community cases were announced.
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