The number of active Covid-19 cases in Otago and Southland topped 10,000 yesterday.
A further 835 new cases across the region pushed the total of people now officially enduring Covid-19 to 10,323, although health officials believe under-reporting of positive tests means many more people have caught the disease.
Seven people who have Covid-19 are in Dunedin Hospital and one is in Southland Hospital.
Active cases in Dunedin neared 6000, a further 327 positive tests taking the city’s total cases to 5938.
Queenstown-Lakes now has 1901 active cases, and a further 100 positive tests took Invercargill to 790 cases.
Several district health boards have reduced medical services due to Covid-caused staff shortages, including Taranaki yesterday.
No changes to southern services are in place at present, SDHB chief operating officer Hamish Brown said.
"The Southern DHBs hospital capacity and service delivery planning for Covid-19 admissions has been designed to be scalable and fluid and respond to changing circumstances throughout the changing phases of the Omicron pandemic.
"Because of this approach we are unable to provide specific numbers of staff absences that would lead to the health system being overwhelmed."
Nationally, a further 22,454 community cases of Covid-19 were announced by the Ministry of Health yesterday.
Four people with the disease died yesterday, two in Lakes, one in Tairawhiti, and one in Counties Manukau.
There were 742 in hospital across the country, 19 of whom were in intensive care.
A breakdown of southern cases showed that Covid-19 remains a disease which has predominantly afflicted the young.
Ministry figures showed that almost 40% of southern Covid patients were aged 20-29, and a further 30% were aged 10-19.
More women than men — 55% to 44% — are contracting Covid-19 in Otago and Southland.
The SDHB yesterday urged all people in the region who had not yet drafted plans for how they and their families would manage if Covid-19 affected their household, to do so.
- The Government announced yesterday the isolation period for Covid-19 cases and their household contacts would be reduced from 10 days to seven days, from tomorrow.
