Dr Bloomfield says today there are 8730 new community cases, with 808 people in hospital.

It is the second day of the new approach to reporting Covid-19 deaths as either the underlying cause or a contributing factor. A total 1427 deaths are confirmed as attributable in either category, he says.

The seven-day rolling average of attributable deaths is 17.

Bloomfield says case rates are trending downward across all four main regions in New Zealand. This is supported by wastewater results and test positivity for people being admitted to hospital.

The case rate from reported test results decreased by about 12 percent compared to the previous week.

A similar case rate decline is also seen in over-65s, he says.

Hospitalisation numbers did go up over the weekend but have come back down again.

Weekly hospital occupancy rates in some areas have begun to level off in the northern and central regions in the past week, Bloomfield says, but in the South Island and the midland region they did stay level or increased.

As expected, the BA.5 variant is continuing to become the most dominant. As of 18 July 61 percent of cases are the BA.5 subvariant, and it is expected to become an "almost full takeover", Bloomfield says.

Some international evidence suggests previous Covid-19 infections - particularly previous Omicron infection - provided better-than-expected protection against BA.5 reinfection. This as well as expected vaccine and second booster uptake has been applied to modelling, which suggests that while there is still a chance hospital occupancy could top 1000 beds, we're tracking closer to a peak of 850.

He reminds that hospitalisation peaks tend to track about a week behind case peaks.

"The worst case scenario that our modellers had suggested a couple of weeks ago with up to 1200 beds occupied and over 20,000 cases a day, is now highly unlikely."

He thanks everyone who is taking steps to protect themselves and their family, particularly through logging test results and isolating when sick.

"We are still seeing quite significant numbers of Covid deaths each day and we will continue to see quite high numbers until case rates really decline quite significantly."

He says getting boosted is one of the most important things people can do to prevent the risk of death from the virus.

More to follow....

- RNZ