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10,191 Covid cases and 14 deaths reported today

Author
NZ Herald ,
Publish Date
Tue, 7 Jun 2022, 1:29pm
(Photo / Getty Images)
(Photo / Getty Images)

10,191 Covid cases and 14 deaths reported today

Author
NZ Herald ,
Publish Date
Tue, 7 Jun 2022, 1:29pm

There have been 10,191 new community cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand over the past two days, according to today's data.

The Ministry of Health today reported a further 14 Covid-related deaths.

There are 371 people in hospital with the virus, including 9 in intensive care.

Today's release includes numbers for yesterday (the Queen's Birthday holiday).

Of the people whose deaths were reported today one was from Northland, two were from the Auckland region, one was from Waikato, one was from Taranaki, five were from Canterbury and four were from the Southern region.

Two people were in their 50s, one was in their 60s, four were in their 70s, five were in their 80s and two were aged over 90.

Of these people, eight were men and six were women.

With winter here, a surge in Omicron cases is expected and already close to 100 Kiwis are dying with the virus each week.

Auckland still dominates New Zealand's Covid cases, with 2997 new infections over the past two days.

On Sunday, Covid cases dropped to their lowest total in 102 days, with 4400 people reporting positive results.

The long holiday weekend is likely to be a factor, if fewer people were being tested.

The ministry also reported a further eight Covid related deaths.

There were 371 people in hospital with the virus, including six in intensive care.

The seven-day rolling average of community cases was 6779 on Sunday – a week before it was 6904.

Last week, 82 people died with the virus, the week before that 98 deaths were reported and 83 were reported for the week of May 16.

On Friday, the ministry reported four cases of BA.5 and one case of BA.4, the first time for each in the community.

Epidemiologist Michael Baker says he is not surprised new Omicron subvariants have been found in the community.

Baker said the real question was whether either would become the dominant strain in New Zealand.

"Initially we can't be exactly sure what they'll do in New Zealand, but certainly in countries overseas they're seeing these other subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 and another one BA.2.12.1 starting to take over from those that came before."

The new variants were more infectious, and would probably lead to a second wave of infection, as has happened overseas, he said.

The subvariants had been detected at New Zealand's border for many weeks and their presence in the community was not unexpected, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the country's vaccination rate is thought to be lower than what is being promoted by the ministry and Government ministers.

Stats NZ is currently reviewing the math and the vaccination rate is not expected to stay up at where it is currently, 96 per cent.

However, the ministry is confident that the national vaccination rate will hold above 90 per cent once Stats NZ includes those who didn't qualify for the dataset used to make calculations.

The dataset under scrutiny is called Health Service Utilisation 2020 and captures those who used the health system in 2020 with an age cut off at June 30 that year.

It means the vaccination rate for New Zealanders aged over 12 is calculated on those who were that age prior to June 30, 2020, and only if they had accessed health services.

The review would assess "strengths and limitations" of the data set and make "suggested improvements and developments".

Stats NZ Manager of population estimates and projections Hamish Slack said the work had begun in March and was expected to be published on the Stats NZ website in early June.

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