Friday December 17

There are 76 new community cases of Covid-19 today.

Of these, 47 are in Auckland, 15 in Waikato, 10 in Bay of Plenty, 1 in the Lakes District and 3 in Taranaki.

There are 51 people in hospital, with 5 of those people in intensive care or high dependency units.

The average age of people currently in hospital is 53.

94 percent of New Zealand's eligible population have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and 90 percent have had a second dose.

There have been 4,335,640 vaccine pass downloads, including 35,824 in the last 24 hours.

On Thursday, New Zealand recorded its first case of the Omicron variant in a recent international arrival who tested positive while in a Christchurch managed isolation facility.

Covid-19 was detected in a wastewater sample taken in Napier on December 15.

The Ministry of Health says this could be due to "recently recovered cases returning to the region who are shedding the virus, transient visitors, or it could signal undetected cases in the community". 

There are no known cases of Covid-19 cases self-isolating in Napier.

Click here for a list of updated locations of interest.

Top image: A bottle of hand sanitizer and a QR code on a table at an entrance of a restaurant in Wellington. Photographer: Birgit Krippner/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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