There are 9906 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Friday.
The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.
There are 626 people in hospital with the virus, including 17 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.
This is a fall on Thursday's hospitalisations of 639, with 12 less people in ICU compared with 24 hours ago.
The ministry also announced 10 new Covid-related deaths. They had died over the past 15 days, but were only recently identified 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 10 people who have died, one person was from Waikato, two each were from the Auckland region, the Lakes DHB area and Canterbury, and three were from the Wellington region.
One person was aged between 10 and 19, two were in their 40s, three were in their 70s, three were in their 80s, and one was over 90.
Five were men and five were women.
"This is a very sad time for whānau and friends and our thoughts and condolences are with them. 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 466.
The seven-day rolling average of deaths is 16.
Friday's positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (492), Auckland (1804), Waikato (833), Bay of Plenty (442), Lakes (217), Hawke’s Bay (434), MidCentral (531), Whanganui (257), Taranaki (317), Tairāwhiti (108), Wairarapa (91), Capital and Coast (670), Hutt Valley (331), Nelson Marlborough (374), Canterbury (1628), South Canterbury (182), Southern (1110) and West Coast (82).
The location of three cases is unknown.
The ministry said 9672 of Friday's cases were detected through RATs and 234 through PCR tests. A total of 2915 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 21,057 RAT results were reported.
The number of active community cases is 78,942. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.
The seven-day rolling average of community cases is 11,281, down from 11,791 on Thursday.
"Case numbers are continuing to decline, along with the seven-day rolling average," the ministry said.
"Today's seven-day average is 11,281, while last Friday it was 14,171."
There are also 69 new cases of Covid-19 at the border, the ministry announced on Friday.
On Thursday, 11,634 community cases were announced.
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