The Ministry of Health has reported 6,232 new cases and 14 deaths in today's 1pm Covid update, as New Zealanders prepare for the Queen's Birthday long weekend.
Over the long weekend, only Saturday and Sunday will have their respective Covid updates at 1pm. Monday will have no update and will be included on Tuesday's 1pm update.
The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers today is 6,850 – last Friday, it was 6,960.
Of the deaths, it includes one historical death of a case in 2020. The ministry says that Covid-19 was a contributory cause of their death. The other 13 deaths are of those who have passed away in the past eight days.
Of these people, four were women and ten were men. One was from Northland; three were from the Auckland region, one was from Taranaki; one from Whanganui; one from the Wellington region; one from Nelson-Marlborough; four from Canterbury; one from South Canterbury and one from Southern.
Two people were in their 60s; three in 70s; three in their 80s and six were aged over 90.
Today’s reported deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 1,210 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 12.
Subvariants detected
Meanwhile, four cases of the BA.5 Omicron subvariant and one case of the BA.5 subvariant are in the community, the first of their kind with no link to the border established.
Seven cases of BA.2.12.1 are also in the community, detected in genome sequencing tests on May 18.
The ministry says BA.2.12.1 appears to be slightly more transmissible than BA.2, the main subvariant circulating in New Zealand, according to new evidence. There is some clinical evidence that the BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants are more transmissible than BA.2, although there is no evidence that they produce more severe illness.
Wastewater samples in Auckland, New Plymouth and Porirua have detected BA.4 or BA.5, while Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Palmerston North and Taupō have detected BA.2.12.1.
New case info
Of the new cases, under 2,000 new cases have been detected in Auckland (1,907). Elsewhere, Waikato has 443, Hawke's Bay has 189, Nelson-Marlborough has 239, Canterbury has 1,007 and West Coast has 73. Some four cases are of unknown location.
There are 47,933 active cases and 1,179,634 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Some 69 imported cases were detected also.
In hospitalisations, there are 390. Waitematā's numbers are the same as yesterday (41) due to no update coming through for today. Counties Manukau has 30 and Auckland DHB has 78. In other DHBs, there are 32 in Capital and Coast, nine in Nelson-Marlborough, four in Northland, seven in Bay of Plenty and zero in Whanganui. Some eight people are in intensive care units.
The full update from the Ministry of Health can be found here.