As New Zealand's health system groans under the strain of Covid-19 and winter illnesses, Dr Ashley Bloomfield has made a "plea" to Kiwis to do their bit.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Health reported 11,382 new Covid-19 cases and 23 further deaths of people with the virus. But, based on wastewater testing, health officials believed actual case numbers were double what was being reported.
The Director-General of Health said the increase in numbers was largely driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
Genomic sequencing showed that, in April, BA.2 was the dominant variant in the country's reported cases. Since the end of May, BA.4 and BA.5 infections had grown rapidly.
Bloomfield said that BA.5 was expected to become dominant in the next few weeks.
"There's no evidence at this stage… that the BA.5 subvariant causes more severe illness than BA.2. And, likewise, early analysis of BA.5 shows no substantial variation or reduction in vaccine effectiveness of three doses of the Pfizer vaccine relative to the BA.2 variant."
However, BA.5 was "clearly better" at evading immunity, he said.
Bloomfield said that meant that for people who had caught Covid-19 before, including Omicron, "it does not mean you are immune to being reinfected".
He said 2 to 3% of new Covid-19 cases were reinfections, but that the rate was likely to grow.
Bloomfield said BA.5 was better at evading immunity, and the rate of infection was expected to rise to 21,000 cases per day in the current outbreak.
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But, if people wore masks, got boosted and stayed at home if they were sick, modelling showed numbers would peak at about 18,000 instead, he said.
Modelling also predicted that if current levels of mask use were kept the same, about 1200 beds would be taken up in hospital each day - higher than the peak in March.
A Health New Zealand spokesperson told 1News there were between 7600 and 7800 staffed ward beds in the hospital on any given day and an additional 250 critical care beds.
The spokesperson said the number of beds changed daily based on staffing and patients' needs.
Part of the increase in hospitalisations was because people over 65 years old were catching Covid-19 at higher rates than before, Bloomfield said.
He said infection rates could be reduced if people kept up mask-wearing.
"If any people out there are not wearing masks because it's a bit of a hassle or uncomfortable, I just want you to think of our health and disability workers who are wearing masks day in day out during their entire time at work while they're dealing with this pressure. My plea to you is if they can do it, you can too," Bloomfield said.
"If everyone does their bit, we will get through winter… it's a very tough winter for our front-line staff."
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