There have been 21,595 new community cases of Covid-19 in the past week and 56 virus-related deaths, the Ministry of Health reported today.

There were 325 cases in hospital as of midnight Sunday.

The seven-day rolling average of cases has risen to 3079. Last Monday, the seven-day rolling average was 2967.

The seven-day rolling average of deaths attributable to Covid-19 is five.

Of the more than 21,000 new cases, 3881 were recorded as reinfections.

Of the 56 people whose deaths the ministry is reporting today: Three were from Northland, 11 were from Auckland region, seven were from Waikato, two were from Tairawhiti, two were from Hawke’s Bay, one was from Taranaki, eight were from MidCentral, five were from Wellington region, two were from Nelson Marlborough, seven were from Canterbury, eight were from Southern.

Two were in their 40s, two were in their 50s, seven were in their 60s, 18 were in their 70s, 17 were in their 80s and 10 were aged over 90. Of these people, 20 were women and 36 were men.

Seven people were in intensive care as of midnight Sunday.

In its last update on November 7, the ministry reported 20,802 new infections in the community over the course of a week.

While the latest ESR analysis showed the Omicron subvariant largely responsible for our winter wave remained dominant – suggesting this wave couldn’t be solely put down to faster-spreading new lineages - modellers have been watching these recently-arrived types tracking upward in parts of the country.

Last Monday, the seven-day rolling case average stood at 2967, which was slightly above where it was the previous week, although daily cases had been falling over recent days.

Although reinfection numbers had crept up and accounted for about 17 per cent of reported cases, most cases appeared to be people having the virus for the first time.

By the books, nearly 1.9 million Kiwis have caught the coronavirus and close to 50,000 of us more than once.

Last week, one Covid-19 expert said it was possible New Zealand may be at or near a peak of its latest bump in cases.

University of Auckland computational biologist Dr David Welch said that, with the climb in reported cases appearing to slow, “we may well be in the situation where we’re at or near a peak”.

Still, he said we wouldn’t know whether cases had peaked until there was a sustained drop in reported infections over weeks.

Last Monday the ministry reported 41 deaths, one was in their 40s, one was in their 50s, three were in their 60s, seven were in their 70s, 15 were in their 80s and 14 were aged over 90.

There were 322 people in hospital with the virus, including eight in intensive care.