There are 9953 new cases of Covid-19.

The Ministry of Health says there are 767 cases in hospital, including 20 people in intensive care.

A further 32 Covid-related deaths have been reported.

Of the people whose Covid-related deaths were reported today, two were in their 60s, six were in their 70s, 11 were in their 80s and 13 were aged over 90.

Seven were from Northland; five were from the Auckland region, one was from Waikato, three were from Bay of Plenty, one was from Lakes, one was from Tairāwhiti, one was from Hawke's Bay, two were from Taranaki, one was from Wellington region, two were from Nelson Marlborough, two were from Canterbury and six were from the Southern region.

"This is a very sad time for whānau and friends and our thoughts and condolences are with them," the ministry said in a statement.

"Out of respect, we will be making no further comment on these."

The total number of deaths with Covid-19 is 1927 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 25.

Eight deaths formally listed in the ministry's overall tally were removed today after being assessed as not dying from the virus.

Of today's new cases, 383 people had recently travelled overseas.

Today's seven day rolling average of cases is 9161 while this time last week it was 9826.

In total, there are 64,081 reported active cases of the virus.

The 32 deaths with Covid reported today had occurred since March 26.

On hospitalisations, today's seven-day average is 766 compared to 673 this time last week.

The average age of the cases in hospital is 66.

The locations of those hospitalised with the virus is Northland (26), Waitematā (84), Counties Manukau (58), Auckland (105), Waikato (70), Bay of Plenty (43), Lakes (21), Hawke's Bay (33), MidCentral (32), Whanganui (15), Taranaki (14), Tairāwhiti (five), Wairarapa (eight), Capital & Coast (31), Hutt Valley (19), Nelson Marlborough (15), Canterbury (130), West Coast (one), South Canterbury (11) and the Southern region (46).

The ministry provides the vaccination status of new hospital admissions for Auckland, Canterbury, Southern, Counties Manukau, Waikato, Capital & Coast, Waitemata and Northland. DHB regions.

A Covid expert says New Zealand's second Omicron wave is peaking earlier and lower than predicted.

University of Auckland senior lecturer in computational evolution Dr David Welch told the Herald initially he predicted this winter wave to reach its summit this week or next at between 15,000 to 20,000 daily infections, similar to figures seen back in March.

Now, Welch said data trends showed the country had already seen this wave's peak at just over 10,000 community cases with peak hospitalisation rates expected to hit this weekend.

He had been tracking the seven-day rolling average of community cases which seemed to peak last weekend before slowing decreasing.

"It's sometimes hard to call these things but the signal is pretty consistent that cases were climbing quite quickly and then they started increasing more slowly and now they are declining so it looks very much like a peak," he said.

Dr David Welch, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland's Centre for Computational Evolution and School of Computer Science. Photo / Jed Bradley

While this was good news, Welch stressed it wasn't time to relax just yet.

"Although we appear to be past the peak, case numbers were still really high so it's not time to relax yet, especially with the return to the school term in a few days.

"A lot of potentially infectious contact happens within our schools so that might slowly decline, we might see a long tail from this wave," Welch said.

The latest Covid-19 figures are due to be released by the Ministry of Health shortly after 1pm today.

Yesterday, there were 10,320 new reported cases of Covid-19 in the community and 34 virus-related deaths.

The number of people fighting the virus in hospital was 744, including 17 in intensive care.

In comparison, back in March daily infections reached more than 20,000 and the number of people in hospital with the virus hit more than 1000.

The average age of those in hospital is 65.

As of yesterday afternoon, the total number of people reported to currently have Covid sat at 65,523.

The seven-day rolling average for hospitalisations is 766, last Wednesday it was 643.

As of yesterday, the total number of publicly reported Covid-related deaths was 1904.

Schools battled with illness and staff shortages last term as the second wave of Omicron began to rear its head, on the last day of term there were 13,344 new cases in the community.

Earlier this week, director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield strongly recommended schools introduce mask wearing for the first four weeks of the new term, which begins on Monday.

He said they were expecting an increase in cases and hospitalisations over the next six weeks.

"Case rates and wastewater results show cases are increasing across all regions in New Zealand."

He said there had been a "significant increase" in Covid cases due to the BA.5 variant.

Welch said he was a little bit puzzled by this but the main indicator Bloomfield had been looking at was hospitalisations increasing.

"Also the pressure of the hospital wasn't coming from Covid alone so I think there is going to be intense pressure on hospitals for the coming few weeks at least."