Today there are 3297 new cases of Covid-19 in the community in New Zealand today, the Ministry of Health has confirmed.

In today’s statement, the Ministry said there were 179 people in hospital with the coronavirus, with one in intensive care.

It said 1729 of the new cases were in the Auckland DHBs, with the rest in the Northland (40), Waikato (297), Bay of Plenty (157), Lakes (54), Hawke’s Bay (18), MidCentral (56), Whanganui (5), Taranaki (30), Tairāwhiti (16), Wairarapa (16), Capital and Coast (123), Hutt Valley (28), Nelson Marlborough (85), Canterbury (176), South Canterbury (7), Southern (455) and West Coast (3) DHBs.

There were also eight new cases in managed isolation today.

In recent days, the number of cases reported for Southern DHB has been lower than the true number because a large number of people have tested positive who have National Health Numbers linked to a home address outside of the Southern DHB region – these cases have been included in other regions’ case counts.

A large number of people who returned a positive result in the Southern region yesterday who have addresses outside of the region are included in Southern’s case count today after work by health officials to reclassify the cases.

“This explains why there is a larger increase in Southern’s cases reported today compared with previous days.” 

“It is important to note that a case undercount anywhere in the country does not significantly impact our assessment of the outbreak, public health decision-making or public health advice.”

“Based on overseas experiences, the Ministry of Health has been expecting the true number of community cases to be higher than the cases reported each day and this has been factored into our Omicron planning.”