There are 6,380 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today and a further 4 Covid-19 related deaths.

There are 508 people in hospital, including 16 cases in intensive care.

Today's seven-day rolling average of case numbers is 8085 while it was 7585 last Tuesday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Although this was an increase from last week, the number of reported community cases was expected to continue to fluctuate day to day and the overall trend remains a reduction in reported cases, the ministry said.

The deaths reported today included people who have died over the previous two days.

These deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 687 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 12.

Two people were from Taranaki and two were from Canterbury.

Two were in their 70s and two were over 90.

Covid testing rates significantly dropped over the long weekend, which has resulted the country's lowest daily case numbers since the peak of the Omicron outbreak.

Yesterday there were 5690 new cases in the community, slightly up on Sunday's 5662.

Ten people were reported to have died with the virus and 514 were in hospital.

Before the long weekend, testing rates were up to 17,855 for rapid antigen tests and 2641 for PCR tests, these figures fell to around between 1300 and 1600 for PCR tests and 10,000 for rapid antigen tests over the weekend.

Yesterday a child under nine who had previously been reported to have died with Covid-19 was removed from the tally.

Ministry officials found that the virus was in fact not a contributing factor after assessment.

While daily case numbers are dropping, the seven-day rolling average rate is increasing.

Yesterday seven-day rolling average of Covid cases in the community was 8355 - up from 7986 last Monday.

New Zealand has now had 887,205 confirmed cases of Covid-19, of which 58,458 are classified as active.

The XE recombinant was detected in New Zealand for the first time last week. It is a mix of two earlier Omicron subvariants, BA.1 and BA.2.

A recombinant emerges when viruses swapped genetic material to create offspring, and sometimes arose if a person was infected with two strains at once.

The Ministry of Health said the person with XE arrived on April 19 and was isolating at home. It said the current health settings could manage XE.

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield earlier this month said if XE arrived here, officials would need to look at its characteristics and assess if stricter rules were needed to keep case numbers down.

University of Auckland computational biologist Dr David Welch has said it appeared the XE subtype would not be able to outcompete BA.2.

University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker has said that with subvariants, waning immunity and requirements being eased, a second wave may be under way here.

"This isn't Delta, it's Omicron and you need three doses of the vaccine to give you protection.

"And there's still 900,000 or more New Zealanders who haven't had the booster, which is really quite shocking."

Booster vaccination rates have slowed, with only 580 people getting the shot on Sunday and 1202 on Saturday.