There are 11,634 new Covid-19 cases in the community on Thursday, the Ministry of Health has announced.
The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.
The ministry also announced there are 639 people in hospital with Covid-19, 29 of whom are in the ICU or a high dependency unit. The hospitalisation number is down by 15 from Wednesday. The ICU number has increased by 6 from Wednesday.
There are also a further 13 deaths of people with Covid-19 to report on Thursday, including three people in their 30s.
Two others were in their 50s, two were in their 60s, four were in their 70s, one was in their 80s, and one over 90. Seven were women and six were men.
The deaths being reported on Thursday include people who have died over the past 10 days.
The ministry said delays to reporting can be associated with people dying with Covid-19, rather than from Covid-19, and Covid being discovered only after death.
“My sincere condolences, as ever, to the whānau, friends, communities have been impacted by these deaths,” Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said.
It brings the total number of publicly reported deaths of people with Covid-19 to 456. The seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 17.
There are also 639 people in hospital in New Zealand with the virus. (Source: 1News)
Of the deaths reported on Thursday, three people were from Northland, one was from Auckland, two were from Waikato, one was from Bay of Plenty, one was from Whanganui, two were from the West Coast, and three were from Southern.
Bloomfield said the country’s weekly rate of Covid-19 cases has fallen from 22.5 cases per 1000 people down to 18.5 cases per 1000 over the past week.
He added that the decision for the country to remain at the Red setting was made while cases were still on the rise in the Southern region.
"We're only really seeing that decline in all regions just in this last one-or two-week period," he said.
The information will inform the public health risk assessment carried out on Monday ahead of Cabinet's decision on traffic light settings.
Bloomfield added that hospitalisations in the Northern region - which includes Auckland Metro and Northland - is declining "but quite slowly still".
"There are still quite a number of people on the wards in the Auckland region."
He said while hospitalisations are on the decline after hitting the peak at 842 cases on March 29, it is "a long tail of hospitalisations", with the Northern region alone seeing 40 new hospitalisations per day.
But he added, however, that not all of the patients are "in hospital because of Covid".
An estimated "around 30-40% of the people are there with Covid as an incidental diagnosis and not the primary cause of their reason for being in hospital", he said.
On Wednesday 12,575 new Covid-19 cases were recorded in New Zealand.
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