Friday's Covid-19 case numbers were actually 9318 after a ministry error resulted in a figure of 13,344 being sent out.
In a statement, the ministry said a computer glitch double-counted some cases already reported yesterday resulted in Friday’s case numbers being incorrectly sent out.
The correct number of 9318 cases were reported over the last 24 hours, ahead of the start of the school holidays.
There are 587 people in hospital with the virus, 33 more than Thursday.
Nine people are in an intensive care or high dependency unit, three fewer than 24 hours ago.
The ministry also announced another 23 deaths of people with Covid-19. Eighteen of the deaths had occurred this month, while the others occurred in May and June. The final death occurred in January last year.
Of the 23 people who have died, one was aged in their 60s, three were in their 70s, 13 were in their 80s and six were aged over 90.
Fourteen were men and nine were women.
The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths of people with Covid-19 to 1651.
The number of active community cases is 59,743, not the 58,170 that were reported earlier on Friday afternoon. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.
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