There are 7829 new community Covid-19 cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Wednesday.
The numbers were reported over the past 24 hours.
There are 395 people in hospital with the virus, 12 more than Tuesday.
Eight people are in intensive care or high dependency unit, one more than 24 hours ago.
The ministry also announced 15 deaths of people with Covid-19 within the past nine days.
Of the 15 people who have died, one was aged in their 20s, one was in their 50s, five were in their 70s, three were in their 80s and five were aged over 90.
Six were men and nine were women.
Three were from the Auckland region, two each were from Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and the Southern region, and one each were from Waikato, the Lakes DHB area, the Wellington region, Nelson Marlborough, Canterbury and the West Coast.
The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths of people with Covid-19 to 1503.
The seven-day rolling average of deaths remains at 12.
The seven-day rolling average of cases is 5808, up from 4873 a week ago, and up on 5480 24 hours ago.
"The higher number of cases in the last two days, compared to last week, is not unusual after a long weekend," the ministry said.
"It will take more time before we are able to determine if this is part of a trend."
Wednesday's positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (141), Auckland (2519), Waikato (476), Bay of Plenty (329), Lakes (100), Hawke's Bay (251), MidCentral (223), Whanganui (92), Taranaki (204), Tairāwhiti (62), Wairarapa (74), Capital and Coast (715), Hutt Valley (320), Nelson Marlborough (260), Canterbury (1219), South Canterbury (103), Southern (679) and West Coast (59).
The location of three cases is unknown.
The ministry said 7536 of Wednesday's cases had been detected through RATs and 293 through PCR tests.
A total of 3772 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 13,847 RAT results were reported.
The number of active community cases is 40,640. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.
There are also 100 new imported cases of Covid-19, the ministry announced.
On Tuesday, 8028 community cases were announced.
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