[Source: 1News]

There are 7870 new community COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health has announced today.

The numbers were reported over the last 24 hours.

There are 393 people in hospital with the virus, 20 more than Wednesday.

Eight people are in an intensive care or high dependency unit, the same number as 24 hours ago.

The ministry also announced 13 deaths of people with COVID-19 going back to January.

It said 11 deaths were recorded in the past two days, while two were in January this year.

Of the 13 people who have died, four were aged in their 60s, one was in their 70s, five were in their 80s and three were aged over 90.

Four of them were from the Auckland region, four were from Canterbury, two were from the Southern DHB area, and one each were from Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington.

Seven were men and six were women.

The latest deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths of people with Covid-19 to 1197.

The seven-day rolling average of deaths remains at 14.

The seven-day rolling average of cases is 6937, down from 7095 a week ago, but up on 6893 24 hours ago.

Thursday’s positive cases, detected through rapid antigen tests (RATs) and PCR tests, are located in Northland (197), Auckland (2456), Waikato (615), Bay of Plenty (237), Lakes (107), Hawke’s Bay (232), MidCentral (296), Whanganui (95), Taranaki (204), Tairāwhiti (49), Wairarapa (59), Capital and Coast (680), Hutt Valley (247), Nelson Marlborough (332), Canterbury (1225), South Canterbury (132), Southern (617) and West Coast (86).

The location of four cases is unknown.

The ministry said 7648 of Thursday’s cases were detected through RATs and 222 through PCR tests.

A total of 3742 PCR tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, while 14,405 RAT results were reported.

The number of active community cases is 48,544. They were identified in the past seven days but have not yet been classified as recovered.

There are also 95 new imported cases of Covid-19, the ministry announced on Thursday.

On Wednesday, 8182 community cases were announced.