There are 6133 new community cases of Covid-19 today, and 23 more people have died with the disease, including three in the Southern DHB area.
There are 377 people in hospital with the virus, including seven in ICU.
Today's numbers come as Director-general of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave a media update to shed light on how the health sector is gearing up for winter.
The Ministry of Health says the seven-day rolling average of community case numbers today is 5983 – last Tuesday it was 6202.
There are 551 new cases in the SDHB area, and 17 people in southern hospitals with the virus.
Deaths with Covid
The ministry said the 23 deaths reported today all occurred within the past 24 days.
The deaths take the pandemic total to 1348, and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 15.
Three of today's deaths were in the South. Of the rest, one was in Northland, five were in the Auckland region, three were in Waikato, one was in the Lakes DHB region, four were in Taranaki, two were in MidCentral, one was in Hawke’s Bay, two were in the Wellington region and one was in South Canterbury.
One person was in their 50s, three were in their 70s, 11 were in their 80s, and eight were aged over 90. Fifteen were women and eight were men.
Bloomfield gives update
Today is the first time Bloomfield has fronted a Covid press conference since he contracted the virus just over two weeks ago while attending the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
He told reporters that the number of new infections and deaths was declining internationally. This indicated that the drop in case numbers was real.
Case numbers were "encouraging" but the 6000 daily numbers was still double what officials had modelled.
He estimated that community testing was identifying about two-thirds of infections in this country. Cases were increasing in those aged over 65, who were more likely to be hospitalised or to die from the virus.
Review into PCR testing backlog
A review, commissioned by the Ministry of Health and released today, has found that a backlog in PCR testing in February should have been predicted.
The ministry's model testing forecast that single test capacity would be exceeded, and modelled scenarios that forecasted PCR testing capacity with pooling, would also be exceeded.
"However, there were deficiencies in the Covid-19 testing system design and operational management that meant that testing strategy objectives were not met because risks to those objectives were not adequately managed or communicated," the review says.
"A disconnect emerged in the knowledge and understanding of the Covid-19 Directorate and the laboratories relative to the director-general and Ministers, which led to them being unprepared for the PCR backlog that eventuated."
The review makes a series of recommendations in order to avoid similar circumstances emerging in the future.
Earlier, microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles told RNZ that it was a matter of when, and not if, the next large wave of Covid-19 cases would hit.
Wiles said that Omicron subvariants BA2.2, BA.4 and BA.5, which are all now in New Zealand, were responsible for surging cases overseas and could add further pressure to the health system during winter.
Meanwhile, hospital staff are calling for Health Minister Andrew Little to acknowledge that there is a hospital crisis.
A doctor said Auckland's Middlemore Hospital has hit a "level of panic", shifting to code red as they manage an influx of patients.
In one night, 71 patients were waiting for beds in the hospital's emergency department. Another night saw more than 420 patients, normally they see 300.
Top emergency doctor John Bonning told The New Zealand Herald that hospitals across the country were seeing "record-level delays and record-numbers of patients".
"Middlemore Hospital saw its biggest day ever" on Tuesday night, he said.
Bonning said it was time for Little to show leadership and he had advised him to reintroduce hospital wait-time targets.
"A patient that arrives in an emergency department with a 10 percent access block, which means if you have 100 patients and 10 have been there for longer than eight hours, then they have a 10 percent greater chance of dying over the next seven days," Bonning said.
"There is a very real impact for people waiting."
Little told the Herald that while hospitals were under pressure, "as they were every winter", they were coping.
The minister said he had not seen any data showing hospitals were reaching record levels of delays and patient presentations.
"It would be interesting if he (Bonning) did provide it, because he is known to say things like that without backing it up with data."
- additional reporting ODT Online
