There are 147 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today and 44 at the border, the Ministry of Health has announced.

Today's new cases are in Northland (14), Auckland (90), Waikato (15), Lakes (9), Bay of Plenty (8), Hawke's Bay (7) and the Capital and Coast region (4).

Thirteen people are in hospital with Covid-19, but none are in intensive care.

This morning Capital and Coast District Health Board confirmed that a person tested positive for Covid-19 at Wellington Regional Hospital yesterday.

The person had turned up at the hospital for an issue not related to Covid but was tested because they had symptoms.

They were now isolating on a ward set up to manage Covid-19 patients and investigations were underway to determine the source of their infection, the health board said.

There are 14 new cases in Northland, across Kerikeri, Kaitaia, and Whangārei. Nine are linked to existing cases and investigations are underway to determine links for two cases.

Three of the cases reside in Northland but were originally allocated as Auckland cases. The people are being transferred for management to the Northland public health unit. Of these three cases, two are linked and one is yet to be connected to the outbreak.

Meanwhile, there are 90 new community cases in Auckland as health and welfare provides helped 1534 people in the region to isolate at home, including 568 cases.

Today's update comes as the Government announced it was reopening the border – starting with Kiwis coming from Australia from the end of the month.

In a speech to Business NZ in Auckland this morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern outlined the five-stage process of reopening the borders.

It also came on the same day changes to the mask-wearing protocol come into effect from 11.59pm tonight.

The changes were announced nine days ago by Ardern at a press conference and they affect those visiting food and drink businesses and other close proximity settings, as well as some primary and secondary students and workplaces with vaccine mandates in place.

One of the new rules is that a face mask now needs to be an actual mask, meaning a covering that is attached to the head by loops around the ears or head - scarfs, bandannas and even T-shirts no longer suffice.

Ardern said the new mask rules would further help the "slow down of Omicron".

Within just a month of the first community exposure to Omicron in New Zealand, the variant has already become the dominant strain of Covid-19.

New modelling predicted that New Zealand could hit 400 daily cases by the end of the week.