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There are 1800 new community cases of Covid-19 and 269 people are in hospital, the Ministry of Health says.
The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers has dropped below 2000 today to 1948. It was 2855 this time last week.
The total number of deaths confirmed as attributable to Covid-19 has risen by two today to 1910.
There have now been a total of 1,728,640 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.
More detailed information on case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths can be found on the Health Ministry website here.
Meanwhile, the government is reportedly considering dropping mask mandates in most settings.
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the traffic light settings would be reviewed by Cabinet in a fortnight, and it was likely New Zealand may soon move to the green light setting as winter ends.
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told Morning Report it seemed to be likely that mask mandates in public settings would be dropped as the shape of the pandemic changes and cases fall.
“We have to think about what does it even mean, the green light traffic network. Essentially it means we just remove all mask requirements.
“What I’m hoping is we’ll look at all the controls we’ve got and we’ll adjust the ones that are less important now that the virus numbers are dropping.”
But Baker believed mask wearing should still be required in many health settings.
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As other countries continue to ease Covid-19 restrictions, epidemiologist Michael Baker says New Zealand will soon be following suit by dropping mask requirements in many public spaces. Audio
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