Wednesday January 26

There are 23 new community cases of Covid-19 today.

Of these new cases, 1 is in Northland, 12 in Auckland, 3 in Waikato, 5 in the Lakes District, 1 in Capital & Coast and 1 in Nelson Marlborough.

Omicron update:

Today, there are 15 new Omicron cases being reported in Auckland, Taranaki, and Nelson Marlborough. 

There is a total of 12 cases linked to the three border workers reported earlier this month with confirmed or suspected Omicron, an increase of 6.

To date, there are 56 community cases of Omicron. These have been proven to be the Omicron variant through whole genome testing or are suspected to be an Omicron case because they have been linked to a confirmed Omicron case.

Whole genome sequencing is under way for all suspected Omicron cases to confirm the variant.

These include 44 cases linked directly or indirectly to a family event and other associated events in Auckland on the weekend of January 15 and 16. 

Including the border workers themselves, there are now a total of 8 cases associated with the MIQ border worker first reported on January 16 and 3 associated with the Auckland airport worker first reported on January 21. 

There have been no additional cases linked to Auckland airport worker first reported on January 19.

The Ministry of Health also announced today that there is 1 case in Taranaki and 2 cases in Nelson Marlborough that were notified after the Ministry’s reporting deadline. These are being treated as Omicron cases and will be formally added to the numbers tomorrow.

Hospitalisations, vaccines and booster shots:

There are 6 people in hospital, with none of those people in intensive care or high dependency units.

The average age of people currently in hospital is 68.

95 percent of New Zealand's eligible population have had the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and 93 percent have had a second dose.

There were 56,899 booster doses administered yesterday, bringing the total to 1,110,408.

Auckland has become the second district health board to fully vaccinate 90 percent of Māori within their rohe.

Yesterday, 15,102 paediatric doses were administered bringing the total to 110,123.

Click here for a list of updated locations of interest.

Top image: Office workers wearing masks while in close proximity in the Covid pandemic. Photo: Stock photo/Getty Images

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