Live: Today's Covid numbers amid 'promising' universal vaccine results

Covid community cases numbers have been gently declining for the past month and a half. Photo / Brett Phibbs

There are 5202 new Covid community cases reported today with eight people with Covid dying and 332 people in hospital.

Four of those in hospita are in intensive care, says the Ministry of Health.

The numbers come as a New Zealand vaccinologist said the first universal coronavirus vaccines could be on the market in a year's time.

Vaccine researchers are increasingly interested in the pursuit of a universal coronavirus vaccine that is resistant to all variants.

University of Auckland vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris said a such a vaccine was close, and the US defence industry was undertaking the most advanced trial of it.

"I guess the most advanced pan-coronavirus vaccine is now in human trials, and it looks very promising," she told Morning Report yesterday.

"It worked every well in our non-human primate friends and it's been in development for quite some years."

Existing vaccines have found it hard to stop symptoms or transmission, but work well keeping people out of hospital and minimising disease. The pan-coronavirus vaccine might do the same, but it was too early to tell, Petousis-Harris said.

Because of the cost and time needed to tweak existing vaccines to counter emerging variants it made sense for companies to look at a new pan-coronavirus solution, she said.

If such vaccines are successful they could be administered annually like the flu vaccine shots over the winter period.

The seven-day rolling average of community cases numbers has been gently declining over the past month and a half.

Yesterday's seven-day rolling average of community case numbers was 6075 – down from the 6850 case numbers the Friday before.

The 10 new deaths reported yesterday took the total number of deaths recorded to 1303.

There were also 361 people with Covid-19 in hospital, down from 393 on Thursday. Nine are in ICU.

The location of yesterday's new Covid cases was: Northland (154), Auckland (1822), Waikato (468), Bay of Plenty (213), Lakes (98), Hawke's Bay (168), MidCentral (273), Whanganui (82), Taranaki (178), Tairāwhiti (37), Wairarapa (53), Capital and Coast (623), Hutt Valley (298), Nelson Marlborough (252), Canterbury (935), South Canterbury (83), Southern (498) and West Coast (57).

The total number of active Covid community cases rose yesterday to 42,517. These were cases identified in the past seven days and not yet classified as recovered.