Old was joined at a media briefing today by by Dr Anthony Jordan, clinical director for the Northern Region Vaccination Programme, Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand.
Case numbers, "as expected", had continued to decline, he said , with a sustained decline in case rates observed across all regions for five straight weeks.
Hospitalisations had continued to decline across the same period and death rates had been declining for the past seven weeks, he said.
Despite that, there were signs the downward trend in cases was "starting to slow" and was expected to plateau, he said.
In the week between September 12 and September 18 there were 9606 new cases of Covid-19 reported in the community.
On average, there were 1369 new cases each day.
There were 175 people in hospital with the virus, including two in intensive care.
The seven-day rolling average of deaths attributed to Covid-19 was three and in total 1972 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic are attributed to the virus.
Figures show the community case numbers dropped significantly over the weekend.
On Saturday there were 885 new cases and on Sunday there were 1023. On Monday the figure jumped to 1820.
Earlier this month, the government scrapped the Covid-19 Protection Framework - also known as the 'traffic light' system - along with many of the public health restrictions that had been in place due to the ongoing pandemic.
The dropping of many of the public restrictions last week did not appear to have affected case numbers, Old said, but he urged people to continue to "play their part".
"It's important to note that we can't be complacent," he said.
"Please, if you are eligible, please get vaccinated or get boosted."
Old said today's briefing would be the last planned media briefing on the Covid-19 response.
He said the Ministry of Health would begin publishing a 'trends and insights' report from September 27, which would come out weekly on Mondays. These reports will include modelling and case rates.
- NZ Herald/RNZ
