There are 4024 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today.

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

The deaths include two people from the Auckland region, two from the Bay of Plenty, two from Wellington, two from Canterbury and one from South Canterbury.

One person was aged in their 40s, one was in their 60s, one was in their 70s, four were in their 80s and two were aged over 90. Of these people, six were women and three were men.

Today's reported deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid to 1415.

There are 391 people in hospital with the virus, including three in intensive care.

The rolling average of daily Covid cases has dipped to under 5000 but hospitals are still under immense pressure, exacerbated by the flu and other winter illnesses.

Yesterday there 3235 new cases in the community and a further five Covid-related deaths were reported.

There were 356 people in hospital with the virus, including five in intensive care.

The seven-day rolling average of daily community case numbers was 4991, last Sunday it was 5919.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told RNZ today that the flu is now a greater cause of respiratory hospitalisation in some Auckland hospitals than Covid-19.

She said hospitals, particularly in Counties Manukau, were currently experiencing significant pressure.

"Here I have an ask for the public, please get your flu vaccine, please wear your mask, it's not only helpful for Covid it's helpful for flu and please if your issues are non-acute but you do need medical attention, do also make use of Healthline."

Ardern was questioned on if the Government was considering raising the Covid traffic light setting back to red.

"When you think about back when we changed to the orange settings, then we were looking at roughly a rolling average of 10,000 cases, we had over 500 hospitalisations, you know close to 30 in ICU.

"Our rolling average now is under 5000 cases, we've got about, what did we have yesterday - about 350 in hospital and five in ICU."

Epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker told the Herald it did look like case numbers overall were continuing a slow decline. However, weekend figures were often less reliable and with self-reporting of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) the numbers were less certain.

More accurate indicators were hospitalisation and death rates, which remained relatively constant for months now, with only slight declines.

Baker said this showed a potential equilibrium had been reached and with reports of hospitals being overwhelmed and schools unable to operate, functionally it indicated the systems were still being overloaded.

"Hopefully our central agencies are putting all of this together and looking at the types of controls we have in place."

Baker, as with many other experts, has been calling for a tightening of measures, particularly around mask use and an action plan for schools, to bring those daily rates further down.

"The mortality rate has been over a dozen a day for several months now, and we have another three months of winter. I think we are going to find that a very large burden, and it is going to touch every New Zealander."