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12 Covid deaths and 6745 new cases - rolling average rises again

Author
Ben Leahy, NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Sat, 7 May 2022, 1:31PM
Photo / NZ Herald
Photo / NZ Herald

12 Covid deaths and 6745 new cases - rolling average rises again

Author
Ben Leahy, NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Sat, 7 May 2022, 1:31PM

There are 6,745 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today.

The Ministry of Health reported a further 12 Covid-related deaths.

There are 339 people in hospital with the virus, including 15 in intensive care.

The latest figures show the seven-day rolling average of community cases is up. Last Saturday it was 7415. Today it is 7512.

The deaths reported today include people who have died over the last two days.

Today's figures come as a new World Health Organisation report estimates nearly 15 million people have been killed either by coronavirus or its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million, news Agency AP reported.

Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.

As of yesterday, the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 in New Zealand was 845, with 24 reported yesterday and the seven-day rolling average being 15.

Of yesterday's deaths, two people were in their 40s; one in their 50s; one in their 60s; seven in their 70s; eight in their 80s and five were aged over 90.

The latest deaths spanned the country.

They included one person from Northland, eight from Auckland; four from Waikato; one from Bay of Plenty; one from Lakes DHB area; one from Taranaki; one from MidCentral; two from the Greater Wellington region; two from Canterbury and three from the Southern region.

The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers also reached 7555 - rising slightly from last Friday when it was 7540.

Yesterday there was 7347 new community cases, while 363 people were in hospital with the virus, including 18 in intensive care.

The average age of Covid patients in hospital is 57.

The new WHO estimates of global deaths from Covid, meanwhile, was described as "sobering" by the organisation's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

He said it should encourage countries to invest more to deal with future emergencies.

In the WHO report, scientists estimated that between January 2020 and the end of last year between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths were either caused directly by the coronavirus or somehow attributed to the pandemic's impact on health systems.

That included instances such as people with cancer being unable to seek treatment because hospitals were full of Covid patients.

The figures are based on country-reported data and statistical modelling, AP said.

However, only about half of the world's countries provided information.

WHO said it wasn't yet able to break down the figures to distinguish between direct deaths from Covid-19 and others caused by the pandemic, but said a future project examining death certificates would probe this.

"This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one," said Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not linked to the WHO research.

For example, Ko said, South Korea's decision to invest heavily in public health after it suffered a severe outbreak of the Mers virus allowed it to endure Covid-19 so far with a per-capita death rate around a 20th of that of the US.

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