Southern Covid-19 case numbers are continuing to climb as wastewater testing confirms increasing rates of the disease in the region.
The Ministry of Health yesterday released its weekly update of Covid-19 cases, which showed the seven-day rolling average of cases nationwide had increased by just over 3000 in the past seven days, and that there had been almost 22,000 new cases reported in that time.
There had been 1627 new cases of the disease reported in the southern health region in the past week.
A fortnight ago, 1277 new cases were reported during that previous week in Otago and Southland.
The southern death toll from Covid-19 also increased.
Of 56 new deaths in New Zealand last week attributed to Covid-19, eight were from southern.
The southern pandemic death toll now stands 180, and the national toll at 2154.
There were 325 people in hospital nationally who had Covid-19.
The ministry said it expected over the next few weeks cases hospitalisations and deaths would continue to increase to a new peak of a third Covid-19 wave.
Acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson said yesterday the Government was not contemplating changing the Covid-19 alert level.
One factor complicating Covid-19 modelling was that, unlike previous waves, epidemiologists were having to deal with several variants of the virus.
The Institute of Environmental Science and Research was tracking four different variants of Covid.
One of the new and more transmissible variants, BA1/2.75, was detected in wastewater in Queenstown a fortnight ago, and has now also been found in Mosgiel.
Rates of the virus were increasing in water tested at three Dunedin locations, as well as in Queenstown, Wanaka, Cromwell and Alexandra.
Figures had remained steady in Invercargill and Bluff and dropped slightly in Gore and Balclutha.
Epidemiologists have consistently warned wastewater suggested fewer cases of Covid were being officially reported than were actually in the community.
The testing results in Queenstown, Wanaka and Central Otago suggested the prevalence of Covid was far greater in those towns than official numbers indicated.
