The Conversation Six years after COVID-19 first reached New Zealand, the country is experiencing its ninth wave of infections.
But the virus we are living with today behaves very differently from the one that caused the global emergency in 2020–22.
Large outbreaks can still occur, but thanks to widespread immunity built through vaccination and infection, COVID now behaves more like other respiratory viruses that circulate each year in our communities.
Hospital admissions are currently around half the level seen during most of last winter, which itself was below earlier waves.
Wastewater monitoring – which tracks fragments of the virus shed into sewage – similarly points to a longer-term year-on-year decline in COVID activity.
New Zealand no longer publishes up-to-date reporting of COVID-attributed deaths, but earlier data showed a clear downward trend. Deaths fell from a high of 2,766 in 2022 to 664 in 2024 and were tracking well under that level before reporting stopped in mid-2025.