Photo: 123rf.com - RNZ / Composite Image - RNZ
Hundreds of people are spending their Christmas in hospital with Covid, while thousands more are at home, but in isolation.
Figures from the Ministry of Health show 427 people are in hospital with the virus today.
The agency says 2668 new cases of Covid-19 were reported yesterday.
Both figures are a substantial decrease from the beginning of the week - data published by Te Whatu Ora shows 6832 new cases were reported on Monday, with 581 people in hospital.
However, according to a Covid-19 modeller, these numbers are likely to be lower than the actual number of cases currently circulating in the community.
Dion O'Neale earlier told Morning Report about two-thirds of cases would go unreported, because people who were asymptomatic would not be testing.
"Around 30 to 40 percent of infections are asymptomatic," he said.