There are 11,560 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Saturday.
The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.
There are 678 people in hospital with the virus, including 30 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.
This is a fall on Friday's hospitalisations of 764, with one less person in ICU compared with 24 hours ago.
The ministry also announced 23 Covid-related deaths. They had died over the past five days, but were only recently 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.
It said the deaths included people who had pre-existing conditions and who were living in aged care facilities.
Of the 23 people who have died, one each were from Northland, Nelson Marlborough and Canterbury, two each were from the Lakes DHB area, MidCentral DHB and Southern DHB areas, and seven each were from Auckland and Wellington.
One person was in their 30s, two were in their 50s, one was in their 60s, one in their 70s, 13 were in their 80s and five were over 90.
Twelve were men and 11 were women.
"At this point in the outbreak, we are continuing to report people dying with Covid-19 on a daily basis despite the number of community cases declining in many parts of the country. Sadly, this is not unexpected, and our thoughts are with the families of these people," the ministry said.
"As has occurred with Omicron overseas, while Covid-19 cases are usually seen in higher numbers among younger people early in the outbreak, over time the more severe and fatal consequences of the virus fall disproportionately on our older and more vulnerable populations."
The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths to 378.
The seven-day rolling average of deaths is now 18.
On Friday, 13,475 community cases were announced.
More to come
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