Almost 2000 COVID cases in Newcastle and Hunter as NSW Health and Hunter New England Health move to weekly surveillance reports for updates

Of these, 816 were detected by PCR testing, with another 1,100 positive rapid antigen test results reported to NSW Health in the 24 hours to 4pm Wednesday.

Both Hunter New England Health and NSW are no longer providing daily case updates with the number of COVID-related deaths and hospitalisations.

Instead, a weekly surveillance report will sum up the state of the pandemic in NSW and the regions.

In the week ending April 23, there were 11,065 cases and 13 COVID-related deaths in Hunter New England.

During that same week across the state, there were 83,924 people diagnosed with the virus - a decrease of 16 per cent on the week prior.

There were also 80 COVID-related deaths reported in that time. Six of those were in people aged under 65 years.

The report showed that of 23,015 tests conducted for influenza, the number of positive cases increased to 2.1 per cent, up from 1.4 per cent in the previous week.

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