Covid-19: 253 new Hawke's Bay cases
Hawke's Bay has 253 new cases, and 12 people in hospital.
The region's cases are among 7,390 new cases nationwide and 18 deaths, the Ministry of Health has reported.
The deaths, which include people who died over the last seven days, take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 665.
Of the nineteen deaths reported today, two were in people under nine years old, one was in their 20s, four in their 60s, two in their 70s, five in their 80s, and five aged over 90.
Six of those who died were from Auckland, four from Canterbury, two from Waikato and one each from Northland, Bay of Plenty, Whanganui, Taranaki, Wellington, Nelson-Marlborough and Southern district health board areas.
"This is a very sad time for whanau and friends and our thoughts and condolences are with them", the ministry said.
The number of community cases detected has risen, with today's seven-day rolling average of 8475, up from 8283 a week ago.
Nationwide, there are 494 people in hospital with Covid-19. Of those, 15 are in ICU or in a high dependency unit.
The number of active community cases is 59,300, with 875,794 cases confirmed in New Zealand since the pandemic began.
First case of XE Omicron variant confirmed in New Zealand:
The person arrived in Aotearoa on Tuesday 19 April and was tested the following day.
Whole genome sequencing subsequently confirmed the variant.
The person is isolating at home.
The ministry said the arrival of XE was not unexpected as it had been spreading overseas.
“At this stage, the public health settings already in place to manage other Omicron variants are assessed to be appropriate for managing XE and no changes are required,” the ministry said in a statement.
“XE is a combination of BA.1 and BA.2 sub variants of Omicron. There is some early evidence that it may be slightly more transmissible than BA.2, which is more transmissible than BA.1.”
The ministry said there was “no evidence to date that XE causes more severe disease than other Omicron lineages, noting that it takes weeks or months to identify the severity of each new variant”.
