There are 1653 new cases of Covid-19 and 341 people in hospital with the virus. Three people are in ICU.

A further six Covid-related deaths have been reported.

One person was in their 60s, one was in their 70s, two were in their 80s and two were aged over 90.

Five were women and one was male.

New Zealand's Covid case numbers are the lowest they have been since February.

This comes as spring is now on our doorstep and winter on its way out.

Today's Covid case numbers are expected to be released in a statement at 1pm from the Ministry of Health.

Yesterday, the ministry reported to their website's Covid-19 data and statistics page that there had been 1394 new community cases over the 24 hours prior. Of these, 108 were reinfections.

There were also 10 deaths reported.

Last week, the ministry announced that it would be ending seven-day updates on Covid cases and deaths, instead reducing the daily statements between Monday and Friday only.

This move comes as infection and hospital rates in the latest Omicron wave continue to steadily fall.

The change came into effect from last Friday.

Health officials also said they will no longer be providing information about the Covid-19 vaccine response in the updates.

In announcing the change, the ministry said the daily 1pm update was being "fine-tuned" to reflect the level of data provided daily on the Ministry of Health website.

"The key changes are that the update will now be produced from Monday to Friday and information about the Covid-19 vaccine response, already provided on the website each day during the week, will no longer be included in the daily 1pm update," the ministry said.

Cases are now at the lowest level since February after the second surge, figures have fallen steadily from about 11,000 in mid-July to about 2000 now.

Furthermore, the seven-day average of people in hospital with Covid was down on Friday by more than 100 a week earlier and daily death numbers have dropped over August.

It does give the country some confidence that New Zealand will enter the warmer months when people will spend more time outside with a lower level of virus circulating in the community.

People can hope that a new Omicron strain or some new variant won't set this country and the rest of the world backwards. Being prepared for one anyway is important as the current crisis eases. There are also still background issues to deal with.

The ministry also announced last week that long Covid will now be tracked with a new coding tool.

It said clinicians around the country were being given the tools to record people diagnosed with long Covid, to help provide a clearer picture of the impact of the condition over time.

Clinical codes had been developed for hospital-level care for patients with "ongoing symptomatic Covid-19" and "post Covid-19 syndrome".

These codes were currently being rolled out across all medical record IT systems used in primary care.