There were 2816 new Covid cases and three deaths reported in Canterbury on Tuesday.
Canterbury now sits just behind Auckland which had 2899 new cases today. In South Canterbury there were 318 new cases.
Nationally there has been 34 more deaths. There are 17,148 new community cases and 842 people in hospital - with 26 in ICU.
There are 64 people with the virus in Canterbury DHB hospitals and three in South Canterbury hospitals.
The deaths have happened over the past 10 days.
Of the people who died, three were from Canterbury, two were from Northland, 17 from the Auckland region, two from Waikato, one from Bay of Plenty, one from Lakes DHB, two from Hawke’s Bay, five from the Wellington region, and one from Southern.
One person was in their 30s, one person was in their 50s, five were in their 60s, nine were in their 70s, seven in their 80s and 11 were in their 90s.
Seventeen were male and 17 were female.
Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay provided an update on the response to the Omicron outbreak.
Dr McElnay was joined via Zoom by Dr Joe Bourne, the Ministry’s lead for Care in the Community.
"The so-called 'Mexican wave' of cases is reflected most in Canterbury," Dr McElnay said.
Numbers showed that Canterbury and South Canterbury combined had a higher number of cases than Auckland.
The Canterbury District Health Board said their hospitals were "busy, but coping".
Christchurch Hospital had 510 patients and 63 had Covid, McElnay said.
Dr McElnay said there are currently 26 people receiving ICU or HDU care across New Zealand.
"That is down on last week's peak of 33 people in ICU."
The cases in hospital are in Northland: 26; North Shore: 143; Middlemore: 173; Auckland: 151; Waikato: 75; Bay of Plenty: 28; Lakes: 9; Tairāwhiti: 1, Hawke’s Bay: 41; Taranaki: 17; Whanganui: 8; MidCentral: 19; Hutt Valley: 16; Capital and Coast: 30; Wairarapa: 1; Nelson Marlborough: 11; Canterbury: 64; South Canterbury: 3; West Coast: 3; and Southern: 23.
Today's figures take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid to 303.
Delays to reporting can be due to people dying "with" rather than "of" Covid-19 and sometimes this is found after they have died, she said.
We expect the numbers of deaths reported will fluctuate day to day but the seven-day rolling average is expected to remain about the same, she said.
Of the 34 deaths announced today, 27 were people who were over the age of 70.
Northern region hospitalisations followed a high-transmission model, but had started to come down, she said.
In Auckland, they were coming down slightly and rest of New Zealand was fairly static during the past week.
The next few weeks were expected to see those rates drop across New Zealand.
Dr McElnay said it was encouraging to see a continued decline in total case numbers.
Today's new community cases were in Northland (730), Auckland (2,899), Waikato (1,566), Bay of Plenty (967), Lakes (479), Hawke’s Bay (1,015), MidCentral (910), Whanganui (447), Taranaki (706), Tairāwhiti (250), Wairarapa (210), Capital and Coast (1,035), Hutt Valley (617), Nelson Marlborough (690), Canterbury (2,816), South Canterbury (318), Southern (1,404), West Coast (79); and Unknown (10). There were also 44 new cases at the border today.
