17 January 2022
There are 16 new community cases of Covid-19 today.
Of these, 7 are in Auckland, 6 in Lakes, 1 in Hawke's Bay, 1 in the Wairarapa, and 1 on the West Coast.
The Ministry of Health first reported the Hawke's Bay case yesterday and it has been officially added to the ministry's tally of Covid-19 community cases today.
There are 30 people in hospital, with two of those people in intensive care or high dependency units.
The average age of people currently in hospital is 48.
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 have been 4,803,808 vaccine pass downloads, including 7,175 in the last 24 hours.
From today, the Pfizer vaccine is available for children aged 5 to 11 years old in New Zealand.
More than 120,000 doses of the child-sized vaccine have been made available in 500 vaccination centres across the country.
Click here for a list of updated locations of interest.
Update on MIQ worker with Omicron
All 7 household contacts of this Omicron case have already returned one negative test result. All of these contacts remain in isolation and will receive further tests.
Of the case’s 67 close contacts identified, 43 have already returned negative test results.
The five close contacts previously identified in Taupō, who have all returned negative day 5 test results, have been transferred to an MIQ facility in Waikato.
Auckland Regional Public Health is continuing to work with MIQ staff to look for any possible routes of transmission between returnees at the Stamford Plaza and the MIQ worker.
Additional testing is being arranged for MIQ staff at this facility.
Additional whole genome sequencing of other positive returnee cases at the Stamford Plaza is also being completed.
Top image: Unite Against Covid banners in a New Zealand testing center. Photo: Getty Images
More stories: