15,250 new Covid cases on Thursday, 22 deaths reported

There are 15,250 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health announced on Thursday.

Health workers at a Christchurch Covid-19 testing centre. (Source: Getty)

The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.

22 new Covid-19 related deaths were announced by the ministry on Thursday. This includes deaths in the past month that the Ministry has only just become aware of.

Of the deaths announced today, 1 was from Northland; 10 were from the Auckland region; 1 was from Waikato; 2 were from Bay of Plenty; 2 were from the Lakes DHB; 2 were from the Wellington region; and 4 were from Canterbury.

Two people were in their 50s, four people were in their 60s, Three people were in their 70s, six in their 80s and seven were over-90.

Fifteen were female and seven were male.

The latest deaths take New Zealand’s total tally to 338, with one previously reported death being removed as it was added twice.

The current 7-day rolling average of reported deaths is 17.

There are 830 people in hospital with the virus, including 26 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.

This is an increase of 13 on Wednesday’s hospitalisations of 817, with 4 fewer people in ICU compared with 24 hours ago.

Meanwhile, the 7-day rolling average of community cases in New Zealand is 14,515.

Thursday’s positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (662), Auckland (2,708), Waikato (1,352), Bay of Plenty (825), Lakes (348), Hawke’s Bay (917), MidCentral (812), Whanganui (360), Taranaki (608), Tairāwhiti (201), Wairarapa (146), Capital and Coast (1,009), Hutt Valley (587), Nelson Marlborough (729), Canterbury (2,379), South Canterbury (305), Southern (1,212), West Coast (77).

The location of 13 cases is unknown.

368 of the new cases were detected using PCR tests, while 14,882 were diagnosed using RAT tests.

3,720 PCR tests and 30,153 RAT tests were done in the past 24 hours.