11,063 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, 16 deaths reported

There are 11,063 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Tuesday.

The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.

There are 622 people in hospital with the virus, including 23 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.

This is a fall on Monday's hospitalisations of 640, with the same number of people in ICU.

The ministry also announced 16 Covid-related deaths.

Of the 16 people who have died, six were from the Auckland region, three were from the Wellington region, two each were from Whanganui and Canterbury, and one each were from Waikato, MidCentral and the Southern DHB area.

One person was in their 30s, two were in their 50s, three were in their 70s, six were in their 80s and four were over 90.

Eleven were men and five were female.

"This is a very sad time for whānau and friends and our thoughts 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 516.

The seven-day rolling average of deaths is 13.

Tuesday's positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (559), Auckland (1984), Waikato (965), Bay of Plenty (536), Lakes (214), Hawke's Bay (474), MidCentral (534), Whanganui (225), Taranaki (370), Tairāwhiti (111), Wairarapa (137, Capital and Coast (683), Hutt Valley (355), Nelson Marlborough (404), Canterbury (1813), South Canterbury (250), Southern (1331) and West Coast (108).

The location of 10 cases is unknown.

The ministry said 10,860 of Tuesday's cases were detected through RATs and 203 through PCR tests. A total of 1885 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 10,860 RAT results were reported.

The number of active community cases is 68,096. 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 9731, down from 10,169 on Monday.

There are also 47 new cases of Covid-19 at the border, the ministry announced on Tuesday.

Providing further insight into the Omicron outbreak, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said health authorities were reassuringly continuing to see case numbers drop.

He said over the last week there had been a fall in case rates per 1000 people - they had fallen from 18.6 per 1000 to 14.3 per 1000. This is a drop of 23%.

Bloomfield said regional variation can also be seen, explaining DHBs in the Northern Region - Northland, Auckland, Waitematā and Counties Manukau - now have the lowest case rate after reaching a high, early peak.

All other regions were slowly declining, he said.

Bloomfield said it was really in the last two to three weeks - since March 27 - that case rates have started to decline.

Rates are coming down in just about every DHB, he said.

In the Southern region, all DHBs except the West Coast saw case rates rise through March, peak in late March and now have started to decline.

Bloomfield said although the West Coast has had much lower case numbers it has not reached its peak yet.

He said similarly, DHBs around the Waikato had peaked around March 13 and have been steadily declining.

Tairāwhiti had the highest peak of 45 cases per 1000.

Taranaki DHB had been a little slower than the other DHBs in that region to peak, Bloomfield went on to say, explaining it was now starting to trend downward as well.

Bloomfield also said health authorities were seeing a drop in hospitalised cases right across the motu.

Although hospital numbers were coming down, they are coming down much slower than case numbers, he pointed out.

The number of new admissions each day was also trending downwards, Bloomfield said.

However, there is still a long tail of hospitalisations in the Auckland region.

On Monday, 7592 community cases were announced.