Four further deaths of people with Covid-19 have been reported in New Zealand, with the number of confirmed cases dropping to 10,239 today.
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In today's statement, the Ministry of Health said there were 848 people in hospital with the coronavirus, up slightly from 841 yesterday. There are 28 people in intensive care, one more than yesterday.
The ministry said while today's hospitalisation numbers are slightly higher, it was encouraging to see the total number of cases in hospital remain considerably lower than the peak of more than 1000 cases in hospital from five days ago.
"This reflects the decrease in hospitalisations across Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty, some of the first regions to be affected by Omicron."
The four new deaths reported today were two men and two women. One was in their 80s and three were in their 90s. The deaths include one in the Auckland region, two in the Wellington region, and one in the Otago Southland region.
New Zealand's total death toll of people who died with Covid-19 is now 258.
The number of new community cases in both Auckland and Canterbury fell to below 2000 today. There were 1886 new cases in Auckland, down from 2652 yesterday, and 1750 cases in Canterbury, down from 2402 yesterday.
The remaining cases were in the Northland (382), Waikato (913), Bay of Plenty (617), Lakes (308), Hawke's Bay (541), MidCentral (493), Whanganui (223), Taranaki (431), Tairāwhiti (135), Wairarapa (105), Capital and Coast (692), Hutt Valley (349), Nelson Marlborough (405), South Canterbury (199) and Southern (772) DHBs.
The ministry said 33 new cases were also indentified at the border.
There were 20 deaths and 14,175 new community cases reported yesterday.
There have now been 596,402 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.