NZ Covid-19 Update: 18,514 new Covid-19 community cases on Saturday, 10 death

There are 18,514 new Covid-19 cases in the community in New Zealand on Saturday, the Ministry of Health has announced.

Covid-19 vaccination centre in The Cloud, Auckland. (Source: 1News)

There are 939 people in hospital with the virus, including 24 in an intensive care or high dependency unit.

This is a decrease on Friday’s hospitalisations of 943, with one less person in ICU compared with 24 hours ago.

The ministry also announced 10 Covid-related deaths.

Of the 10 people who died, one was from Northland, three were from Auckland, one was from Waikato, two were from Bay of Plenty, two from the Lakes DHB area, and one was from Wellington.

One of the people was in their 40s, two were in their 60s, four were in their 80s, and three were in their 90s.

Six of them were women and four were men.

“Our thoughts are with their family and friends at this sad time and we will be making no further comment,” the ministry said.

Saturday’s deaths take the total number of publicly reported Covid-related deaths to 166.

The seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is eight.

Saturday’s 18,514 positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (643), Auckland (4346), Waikato (1729), Bay of Plenty (1221), Lakes (541), Hawke’s Bay (1108), MidCentral (847), Whanganui (273), Taranaki (601), Tairāwhiti (365), Wairarapa (260), Capital and Coast (1237), Hutt Valley (697), Nelson Marlborough (457), Canterbury (2694), South Canterbury (217), Southern (1224) and West Coast (42).

The location of 12 cases is unknown.

The ministry said 17,985 of Saturday’s figures were detected through RATs and 529 through PCR tests. A total of 3828 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 36,134 RAT results were reported.

The number of active community cases is 123,481. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.

The ministry said the seven-day rolling average of cases is 17,641, down slightly from 17,673 on Friday.

It explained with daily reported cases continuing to fluctuate, the seven-day rolling average of cases gives a more reliable indicator of the trend in cases.

There are also 45 new cases at the border on Saturday.

On Friday, 14,128 community cases were recorded in New Zealand.