Health officials are due to provide their regular weekly update on Covid-19, as experts watch case numbers closely to see whether the latest wave has peaked.

In its last update on November 7, the ministry reported 20,802 new infections in the community over the course of a week.

While the latest ESR analysis showed the Omicron subvariant largely responsible for our winter wave remained dominant – suggesting this wave couldn’t be solely put down to faster-spreading new lineages - modellers have been watching these recently-arrived types tracking upward in parts of the country.

Last Monday, the seven-day rolling case average stood at 2967, which was slightly above where it was the previous week, although daily cases had been falling over recent days.

Although reinfection numbers had crept up and accounted for about 17 per cent of reported cases, most cases appeared to be people having the virus for the first time.

By the books, nearly 1.9 million Kiwis have caught the coronavirus and close to 50,000 of us more than once.

Last week, one Covid-19 expert said it was possible New Zealand may be at or near a peak of its latest bump in cases.

University of Auckland computational biologist Dr David Welch said that, with the climb in reported cases appearing to slow, “we may well be in the situation where we’re at or near a peak”.

Still, he said we wouldn’t know whether cases had peaked until there was a sustained drop in reported infections over weeks.

Last Monday the ministry reported 41 deaths, one was in their 40s, one was in their 50s, three were in their 60s, seven were in their 70s, 15 were in their 80s and 14 were aged over 90.

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There were 322 people in hospital with the virus, including eight in intensive care.