The Ministry of Health has reported 2464 new cases of Covid-19 and 11 deaths related to the virus.

This includes three people who were in their 70s, five in their 80s and three people aged over 90.

Six were women and five were men.

One person was from Northland, two were from Auckland, one was from Waikato, one was from Bay of Plenty, one was from Hawke's Bay, one was from Taranaki, one was from Nelson Marlborough, one was from Canterbury, one was from West Coast and one person was from the Southern region.

Meanwhile, there are 314 people with Covid-19 hospital, including four people in intensive care.

In a statement, the ministry said there has been a total of 1884 deaths that have been confirmed as attributable to Covid (either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor).

The weekly rolling average for the increase in total deaths attributable to the virus is now six.

"This is a very sad time for whānau and friends of those who have died, and our thoughts and condolences are with them," the ministry said.

Of today's 2464 cases, 128 people had recently travelled overseas.

The total number of active cases in the country today is 15,749.

Alongside Covid daily case numbers, those dying with the virus and because of the virus is on a downward trend after peaking last month.

This is also in line with a drop in hospitalisations and those in ICU.

The weekly rolling average of cases as continued to decline, dropping from 3496 last Tuesday to 2251 today.

The weekly hospitalisation average was 453 this time last week and 339 today.

Covid-19 has become a leading cause of death in New Zealand, but the seemingly simple question "How many people have died of Covid-19?" doesn't have a simple answer, NZME newsroom's head of data Chris Knox explains.

The latest data gathered by the Herald shows that in the week ending on August 21, 56 deaths were attributable to Covid-19 and 96 people died with the virus.

A month prior, on the week ending on August 31, these figures peaked at 115 deaths attributable to Covid-19 and 227 deaths reported with the virus.

Covid deaths in New Zealand started to increase when Omicron first hit the country in February this year. They then spiked again over June and July when a second wave of the variant began to spread.

On average 627 people die each week in New Zealand - on the week ending on August 14, deaths with and attributable to Covid made up for nearly 30 per cent of the weekly death rate.

For the week ending on July 31, Covid deaths made up for nearly 40 per cent of the weekly death rate.

New Zealand reports Covid-19 deaths using two separate but overlapping categories: the number of people who have died with Covid-19 and the number of people who have died of Covid-19.

Deaths of Covid-19 is the key number, but "deaths with" is valuable either when cause-of-death data is very incomplete or as an estimate of how incomplete cause of death data is.

Deaths with Covid-19 can be readily identified without clinical input, so these can be reported on quickly and relatively easily.

New Zealand, following the UK, defines a death with Covid-19 as any death that occurs within 28 days of being reported as a Covid-19 case.

A hypothetical unlucky individual who was struck by lightning and killed right after reporting their positive RAT test would be reported as a death with Covid-19.

All deaths are included in the deaths with Covid-19 count regardless of the cause of death – even if they are our unlucky lightning victim – because adding any requirement to understand cause of death before reporting on deaths with Covid-19 would slow the reporting process.

In July the focus of New Zealand's Covid-19 death reporting moved to deaths from Covid-19.

New Zealand, following both the UK and the US, defines deaths from Covid-19 as deaths where Covid-19 is listed as a cause of death on the death certificate – the Ministry of Health refers to this as 'Covid-19 attributed deaths'.

The number of Covid-19 attributed deaths - 1869 as of August 29 - is now the primary Covid-19 deaths statistic New Zealand reports.