Today we are reporting 14,494 new community cases, 896 people in hospital with the virus, and eight COVID-19 related deaths.
We know the Omicron variant can cause serious illness and death either directly or by its impact on other health conditions, particularly for our older and more vulnerable New Zealanders.
Getting vaccinated and boosted will help reduce your risk of severe COVID-19 illness and could save your life. There continues to be a drop in overall case numbers where for four days last week case numbers were reported at over 20,000 cases and the reduction to 18,699 yesterday has continued to the 14,494 seen today.
That fall has been most pronounced in Auckland where reported case numbers have fallen steadily this week from just under 10,000 reported cases on 8 March to just over 4500 today.