Coding error saw major undercount of Covid hospitalisations during pandemic

A "coding issue" has led to a big discrepancy in the number of people reported as being hospitalised for Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health said today.

The ministry posted a tweet with the correction this afternoon.

"The total number of people reported as hospitalised for Covid-19, from the start of the pandemic to midnight October 16, has increased from 14,043 to 19,476.

"This is due to a coding issue that has resulted in an undercount of case data used to identify patterns of hospitalisations," the tweet reads.

The ministry added it, "continues to review and improve Covid-19 data collection and reporting as we gain greater insights from complex data sources".

It also clarified: "This coding issue identified with one of those measures had no impact on the Ministry’s advice on, or decisions about, Covid-19 settings as the daily reported hospitalisation data, captured by a different system, was used to inform the Ministry’s advice".

It was also announced today that there were 14,311 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand in the last week.

The numbers cover the week from Monday, October 10 to Sunday, October 16.

Thirty-four more people with the virus have died.

The Ministry of Health last week also issued a warning over a new Omicron sub-variant which had been found in New Zealand for the first time.

The first case of BQ.1.1 was recorded in Southland and it was also detected in Te Waipounamu wastewaters.

Senior Scientist David Winter says overseas data suggests BQ.1.1 will replace BA.5 as the dominant strain of Covid.

"There's actually a great deal of uncertainty of how it will behave in New Zealand because we have a different background in terms of immunity."

Epidemiologist Michael Baker says the new sub-variant is "out-competing the other sub-variants".

"That means it's effectively infecting more people and it will cause a wave of infection," he said.

The arrival of the new sub-variant comes after the Government ditched masks, mandates and most other Covid measures in September.

Baker has called for a return to the Covid alert system as cases grow overseas.

"I'd really like to see all our politicians getting together to have a joined up agreed strategy for how we're going to manage this threat."