More than 1940 cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Canterbury over the last 24 hours, the latest district health board data shows.
"There have been 1942 cases in the last 24 hours. We will start giving this figure each day as a large number of cases were counted as recovered in our latest reporting," a Canterbury District Health Board spokesperson said.
This is the number of cases reported over the 24 hours up to 8am on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Health is still set to give its daily update at 1pm today, with director of public health Dr Caroline McElnay leading today's briefing. Dr McElnay will be joined by the ministry’s group manager of data and digital Michael Dreyer.
The ministry’s daily reported cases in Canterbury may differ from those reported at a CDHB or local public health unit level because of different reporting cut off times and the assignment of cases between regions. The ministry reported 1308 new community cases in Canterbury yesterday.
The CDHB says there were 11,021 total active cases in Canterbury as of 8am on Tuesday, including 7090 in Christchurch, 826 in Waimakariri and 1046 in Selwyn.
To help the CDHB understand the size of the outbreak, it is asking people to report the results of their rapid antigen tests (RATs), whether negative or positive, by recording their results online through MyCovidRecord.nz or calling 0800 222 478 and selecting option 3.
If you need to report a RAT result for someone under the age of 12, you will need to do this over the phone.
Canterbury University epidemiologist Professor Michael Plank said because some people were not logging their rapid antigen test results, it was hard to tell the trend in actual case numbers.
Plank also told RNZ's Morning Report much of New Zealand, including Christchurch, is one or two weeks behind Auckland's Covid curve, and could experience two peaks of hospitalisations.
"Case numbers have been pretty difficult to interpret since the introduction to RATs," he said.
"The hospital numbers are more reliable but it's important to remember they are also more lagged because of the time it takes for someone to get sick."
Hospital numbers typically lagged behind cases by about a week, he said.
Yesterday, there were 17,522 new cases of Covid-19 in the New Zealand community and 696 people in hospital.
At Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, doctors were stepping in to cover nursing shifts as staff absences reach a critical point.
There were 195 people in Middlemore with Covid-19 yesterday and 520 across Auckland's three main cities.
In Auckland, the next seven to 10 days were a critical point in the outbreak and would be tough going on the health sector, many working in the sector believed.
The models suggested hospitalisation would most likely peak nationally at around 1000 people in hospital, Plank said.
"It's a bit more complicated than that because of the Auckland versus the rest of the country, we could sort of see two peaks, one driven by the Auckland cases and another one as it spreads to other parts of the country," he said.
Hospitalisations were likely to peak in two to three weeks time in Auckland, he said.
Wellington and Christchurch were about one to two weeks behind this, he said.
"If we do start to see increasing cases in older age groups or in unvaccinated groups then that's a warning sign that there could be incoming hospitalisations coming in the next few weeks or days."
Unvaccinated people made up a high number of the hospitalisations, he said.
The ministry was also urging people to self-report rapid antigen test results, whether negative or positive and regardless of whether someone in the household had already reported theirs.
It says self-reporting of RATs helped to provide a clearer picture of how the pandemic was progressing.
-Additional reporting RNZ
