A person who died of an unrelated medical condition in Dunedin yesterday while receiving palliative care had tested positive for Covid-19.
The case is one of five new deaths with Covid reported by the Ministry of Health today.
The ministry is also reporting 22,527 new community cases, including 632 in the southern area.
There are 562 people in hospital today, 11 in ICU. There are five people in hospital in the southern area.
The case numbers are down on yesterday's 23,183 but hospitalisations are up from 503 yesterday.
New deaths with Covid
The ministry is reporting the deaths of five people with Covid-19 today.
The five who died all had unrelated medical conditions but tested positive for the coronavirus. They were in Tauranga, Waikato and Middlemore (2) hospitals and a person in Dunedin who was receiving palliative care.
The Southern District Health Board this afternoon said the death in Dunedin had occurred in an aged residential care facility yesterday, and stressed there were pre-existing medical conditions which contributed to the death.
"It would be inaccurate to report that this person died as a direct result of Covid-19 infection."
The ministry said that some of the five deaths were only being announced today as they had only recently been notified in the Ministry's national reporting systems.
Today's new community cases are in (PCR & RAT): Northland (515), Auckland (13,252), Waikato (1,674), Bay of Plenty (1,248), Lakes (464), Hawke’s Bay (325), MidCentral (364), Whanganui (79), Taranaki (257), Tairāwhiti (155), Wairarapa (69), Capital and Coast (1,356), Hutt Valley (577), Nelson Marlborough (304), Canterbury (1,163), South Canterbury (63), Southern (632), West Coast (16); Unknown (14).
There are eight new cases at the border today.
The ministry says there are 152,358 active community cases in the country today. The total number of cases since the pandemic began is 187,964.
Retesting advised
The ministry said in a statement it was seeing reports of people who are symptomatic testing negative for Covid-19 in their initial test but later returning a positive test.
"Our advice is that even if you receive a negative test, you should stay at home until well and retest if symptoms persist or worsen."
It also advised wearing a mask when people were out and about.
Masks reduced the risk of a person both catching and spreading the virus, said the ministry.
The ministry said more than 130,000 orders were placed through the RAT requester site for free Rapid Antigen Tests yesterday, covering more than half a million people, or about 2 million tests.
"The Ministry wants to reassure people that we have enough RATs to help New Zealand through a widespread Omicron outbreak in the coming months. Over the past week, 8.8m million RATs have been distributed. Over the weekend, another 8m RATs are expected to arrive in the country with another 99 million confirmed for delivery this month."
- ODT Online/NZ Herald
