The Director-General of Health has briefed media on how well the country has responded to the Omicron outbreak.
Watch the update here:
Dr Ashley Bloomfield was joined by the Ministry of Health's chief science adviser Dr Ian Town for the briefing.
Today there were 6133 new Covid-19 cases in the community and 23 further deaths reported today.
Dr Bloomfield says the number of new weekly cases and deaths is continuing to decline internationally.
A number of countries have reduced testing since March so this would have had an impact but there were also a significant drop in deaths internationally, suggesting the case number drop is real, Bloomfield says.
He says the northern hemisphere going into summer is probably a key contributor to this.
Bloomfield says northern hemisphere countries are looking closely at what happens during NZ and Australia's winter.
"And in particular, the impact of our rollout of that fourth vaccine [dose]."
Overall, case rates are continuing to drop with average case numbers over the past seven days being just under 6000. The rate per thousand has dropped to 8.3 per 1000 in the last week, to the week ending 12 June.
Up to 12 June, border worker testing was showing a rate of 1.4 percent, Bloomfield says.
"So we're probably picking up around two thirds of the cases with our community testing, which is pretty good this far into the outbreak."
Bloomfield says people still testing and uploading their results is helping with this.
"Of note in that last week is that we are seeing an increase in case rates in over 65s across the motu."
"That's important because we know our older people are more likely to have severe infection and more likely to be hospitalised or die from Covid-19."
"Our message to everybody out there, please continue to protect our older people and those who are vulnerable because of pre-existing conditions or being immunocompromised."
Wear masks and don't visit them if you're unwell, he says.
The case numbers are encouraging but the average is still about double of what was modelled, he says. "So it's quite a high baseline rate."
Hospitalisations are coming down but very slowly, Bloomfield says.
"About twice the number of hospitalisations that we had modelled a couple of months ago for this period."
In a number of places, this is having a very significant burden on not just hospitals but primary care.
"Interestingly, only about 20 percent of people who are admitted at the moment to hospital with what we call SARI - severe acute respiratory infection - only about 20 percent of those people have got Covid. Well over half have got influenza, and it's the influenza A type that is quite rampant out in the community."
We're not seeing RSV, he says.
But it is being monitored.
Early data suggests the subtypes in the flu vaccine are a good match for the subtypes seen in the community.
"If you haven't had your flu vaccine yet, please do it."
On the PCR testing review, Bloomfield says it became clear that the testing wasn't keeping up with demand.
"When the case numbers increased quickly, as it took hold, we reached a point where we had to make that switch from PCR testing to rapid antigen testing because we had a high enough prevalence of the virus in the community to merit rapid antigen testing."
"However it was not a smooth transition... We ended up with a backlog of around 32,000 tests, mostly in Auckland and on 1 March I spoke about those, what we were doing about those and apologised to the people whose results were delayed and who were affected by that."
"As one does with these reports, I certainly welcome the report and the recommendations. I think it's a very thorough piece of work and I want to thank the team from Allan and Clarke that did it."
Work is well underway to implement the recommendations, he says.
He says there was some inconsistent reporting of testing capacity.
"It's clear from the findings that we could and should have done better on both estimating that capacity and communicating that nice and clearly."
"We were updating it on a regular basis but when I became aware of the inconsistencies I can confirm that I and four ministers worked with our testing team so we could get a really consistent picture of our capacity for both pool testing and unpool testing."
"I do want to just emphasise that the issues arose at a time when the health system, including our labs and our testing team here in the ministry, who were working extremely hard, were responding on a minute by minute basis to a rapidly evolving outbreak with a highly transmissible variant."
"The team were doing their best at the time but it's clear that we can and should have done better.'
The delays that happened were not the fault of the labs or lab workers, Bloomfield says.
"I want to once again to thank all of our lab staff."
A review into the response to the Delta outbreak has also been published and some briefings have also been released.
Dr Town says a key part of being able to respond to current and future outbreaks is having a clear picture of the impact of Covid-19, particularly among those who require hospital.
Preliminary data shows two thirds of people were admitted to hospital having Covid as the main cause rather than happening to test positive.
Town says for those that have been hospitalised with Covid and are not vaccinated, the data shows the rate is about six times higher.
It also shows that those that are unvaccinated while they are in hospital have a more severe illness and about three times more likely to end up in ICU.
"There's no doubt that our hospitals are busy and there are many people, as is often the case over winter, who are presenting to primary care and secondary care with acute respiratory illnesses. This is a pattern our hospitals are used to and happens every winter."
At the moment a number of these people are also presenting to emergency rooms, he says.
He acknowledges that at times there have been longer waits than would be desirable and is conscious of the impact of this.
All DHBs have strategies in place to deal with demand, he says.
Reinfection advice will be provided in the near future.
"There's no doubt the next few months is going to be tough," Bloomfield says.
"The health system can't do it alone. There are things that we can all do to protect each other and to make sure that our health system is not overloaded and that people who need care can
Being up to date with vaccinations, mask wearing, staying at home if you're unwell and not visiting people who may be vulnerable and testing are all things people can do, he says.
The ministry didn't anticipate - and should have - that PCR samples couldn't be moved around the country which contributed to the testing backlog, Bloomfield says.
"Even the modelling itself I don't think took into account that we couldn't readily move samples around the country between different labs with different information systems. I think that was a key factor in what led to the backlog in Auckland."
Bloomfield says as he is responsible for the system he was the person who fronted the media standup on 1 March and identify the problem, as well as commissioning the report.
The lab society has pointed out longstanding issues with the delivery of services, Bloomfield says.
But, he says, the relationship between labs and the ministry is very good.
There's no intention to introduce charges for Covid-19 testing.
Asked if this could have been avoided if there were enough RATs in place, Bloomfield says the ministry "didn't quite get right".
There is now good supply of tests, he says.
On Sunday microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles told RNZ that with the new Omicron subvariants now in New Zealand the question is when the next wave of Covid-19 cases will hit.
Another Covid-19 wave, combined with influenza with other respiratory illnesses, would make for a difficult winter for the health sector, Dr Wiles said.
Bloomfield who has led the government's health response to Covid-19 and the vaccination rollout announced in April that he would leave the role at the end of next month.
More to come...