[Source: 1News]

There are 5202 new community Covid-19 cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced on Saturday.

The numbers were reported over the past 24 hours.

There are 332 people in hospital with the virus, 29 fewer than Friday.

Four people are in an intensive care or high dependency unit, five fewer than 24 hours ago.

The ministry also announced eight deaths of people with Covid-19 over the past five days.

Of the eight deaths, one person was aged in their 60s, four were in their 70s, one was in their 80s and two were aged over 90.

Two of them were from the Bay of Plenty, two were from Canterbury, and one each were from the MidCentral DHB area, the Wellington region, South Canterbury and the Southern DHB area.

Five were men and three were women.

The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths of people with Covid-19 to 1311.

The seven-day rolling average of deaths remains at 13.

The seven-day rolling average of cases is 5914, down from 6841 a week ago, and down on 6075 24 hours ago.

Saturday’s positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (132), Auckland (1430), Waikato (351), Bay of Plenty (207), Lakes (70), Hawke’s Bay (153), MidCentral (250), Whanganui (64), Taranaki (164), Tairāwhiti (19), Wairarapa (45), Capital and Coast (506), Hutt Valley (237), Nelson Marlborough (184), Canterbury (766), South Canterbury (84), Southern (410) and West Coast (56).

The location of two cases is unknown.

The ministry said 4977 of today’s cases were detected through RATs and 153 through PCR tests.

A total of 3815 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 7516 RAT results were reported.

The number of active community cases is 41,388. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.

There are also 72 new imported cases of Covid-19, the ministry announced.

6297 community cases were announced yesterday.