A child under the age of 10 has died with Covid-19 and a further 32,010​ new cases have been reported across New Zealand in the week before Christmas.

This was down from​ 42,740 new cases reported on December 19.

The Ministry of Health gave the update, covering the period from Monday, December 19 to Sunday, December 25, on Wednesday afternoon December 28.

In the past seven days, ​78 deaths have been reported in people with Covid-19: 43​​ of which had been coded as either being where Covid-19 was the underlying cause of death (23)​ or a contributing factor (20).

Classifications for a further 35​ were not yet available.

Of the 78 people, one was less than 10 years old, six were in their 50s, six were in their 60s, 15 were in their 70s, 30 were in their 80s and 20 were aged over 90. Of these, 40 were women and 37 were men.

To date, there have been ​2331 total deaths attributed to Covid-19.

The rolling seven-day average of daily new reported cases is now 4565.

Modellers said it was likely this wave will be nearing, or reaching, a peak in cases in the week of Christmas.

There were ​413 people in hospital with Covid-19 as of midnight on Sunday, down from 581 on Sunday the week prior. Of these, 15​ were in an intensive care or high dependency care unit. ​

Of the 32,010 new cases reported in the past week, 9660 were reinfections – almost one-third. Of these, 367 were reinfections reported within 90 days of a prior infection.

Of the more than 2 million cases to date, there have been 106,320​ reported reinfections.

Because of under-reporting of cases, some ‘first infections' will really be reinfections (either because people didn't report their first infection, or were asymptomatic the first time).

There may also be reinfections going unreported.

University of Auckland computational biologist and Covid-19 modeller David Welch estimates the true number of reinfections is about 50 per cent of current cases, across the population.

Waitematā (north and west Auckland) saw the highest number of new cases reported in the past seven days (4407) followed by Counties Manukau (east and south Auckland) (4118), and Canterbury (3485)​.

Because of the public holidays, the next update will be released on Wednesday, January 4, rather than Monday as usual, a Ministry of Health spokesperson confirmed.