31 community cases, 6 in ICU – MOH

The Ministry of Health announced there are 31 new community cases of COVID-19 today, with 6 in ICU.

Omicron update:

29 cases have been identified at the border. While still awaiting whole genome sequencing of these cases, it is expected that some of these cases will be the Omicron variant.

This variant of COVID-19 continues to be having a significant impact globally, so is not unexpected to see an increase of cases identified at the border.

Hospitalisations:

• Cases in hospital: 53; North Shore: 9; Auckland: 16; Middlemore: 22; Tauranga: 5 Rotorua: 1
• Vaccination status of current hospitalisations (Northern Region wards only): Unvaccinated or not eligible (20 cases / 46.5%); partially immunised <7 days from second dose or have only received one dose (8 cases / 18.6%); fully vaccinated at least 7 days before being reported as a case (14 cases / 32.6%); 1 unknown (2.3%).
• Average age of current hospitalisations: 53
• Cases in ICU or HDU: 6 (3 in Middlemore; 3 in Tauranga)

Cases:

• Seven day rolling average of community cases: 43.4
• Number of new community cases: 31
• Number of new cases identified at the border: 29
• Location of new community cases: Auckland (14), Waikato (1), Bay of Plenty (12), Lakes (4)
• Number of community cases (total): 10,985 (in current community outbreak)
• Cases epidemiologically linked (total): 8,268
• Number of active cases (total): 1,143 (cases identified in the past 21 days and not yet classified as recovered)
• Confirmed cases (total): 13,992

Test results in New Zealand are provided way of the PCR test.