4 Mar 2024

Covid-19 update: 5575 new cases, 21 deaths

3:50 pm on 4 March 2024
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The number of Covid-19 cases reported in the last week is slightly down on the week before.

As of 11.59pm on Sunday, 5575 cases have been reported with a seven-day rolling average of 796. There were 164 cases in hospital, and data for the number of cases in intensive care was not available. Of all new cases, 3597 were reinfections.

Twenty one deaths in the last week were attibuted to Covid-19.

On Monday Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora confirmed the previously recommended advice of testing for five days consecutively was changing.

Household contacts of someone positive for Covid-19 are no longer recommended to test daily, unless they develop symptoms themselves.

Only household contacts who developed one or more symptoms were recommended to stay at home and take a rapid antigen test, it said.

If someone returned a positive result, it was recommended that they isolated for at least five days, starting at Day 0 - even if they only had mild symptoms and they have had Covid-19 before.

In last Monday's update, there were 6084 new cases, 20 deaths were attributed to the virus and 205 people were in hospital with Covid.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases was down from 868 the week before.

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