There have been another 16 deaths of people with Covid-19 in New Zealand, as well as a further 6910 new community cases.
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In its daily update, the Ministry of Health also said the seven-day rolling average of community case numbers is 8498.
There were 836 people in hospital with the virus, including 27 in intensive care or a HDU unit. That compares with 720 people, including 21 In ICU yesterday.
On the deaths being reported today, one was from the Auckland region, one was from Waikato, two were from Lakes, one was from Tairawhiti, one was from Hawke's Bay, four were from Taranaki, one was from Whanganui, two were from Wellington region and three were from Southern.
Six were in their 70s, five were in their 80s and five were aged over 90. Of these people, five were women and 11 were men.
That takes the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 2006 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 24.
There were also 387 new cases at the border.
Over one fifth of the country's Covid-19 hospitalisations are at present in Canterbury.
Christchurch Hospital confirmed it had 169 Covid-19 patients today - its highest number since the pandemic began.
Last week, the hospital tightened its visitor restrictions amid surging cases.
Health New Zealand South Island interim director Peter Bramley said the hospital was at 113 percent occupancy this afternoon.
He said nearly 300 staff members were also off sick with the virus.
At Monday's post-Cabinet meeting media breifing, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said now was not the time to change the underlying system or lowering the Covid-19 settings, and said one of the major considerations in changes was pressure on the health system - so at the moment there was no intention to move away from the orange light setting.
She said vaccines, masks and isolation when you were sick were the main public health measures in use at the moment, and there was another review of the settings and their specific details coming up in August.
Wastewater prevalence suggested there may be a decline in cases coming, although hospitalisations had been particularly high recently. Ardern said weekends could have an effect on the numbers, however, so she wanted to see whether that changed.
The view continued to be that the most appropriate settings were the ones we have now, Ardern said. Gathering limits would need to be markedly different, she said, to have an effect on some of the variants we were seeing now.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who steps down from the role on Friday, said while Covid-19 cases have been inching up recently, he was confident the wave would recede.
He told Saturday Morning while many wanted to move on from the pandemic, that was premature.
"The virus isn't done with us yet. We're still in a pandemic. The WHO hasn't withdrawn that categorisation and the virus continues to evolve.
"We've just got to keep our wits about us."
