The Ministry of Health is today reporting 3,235 community cases, 356 current hospitalisations and five deaths.

The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers today is 4,991. Last Sunday it was 5,919.

Today’s reported deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 1,406. The seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 12.

Two of the people who have died were from the Auckland region, one was from Hawke’s Bay; one was from Nelson-Marlborough and one was from Canterbury.

Two people were in their 60s and three people were aged over 90. Two were women and three were men.

Taskmaster NZ is back for round three with TVNZ this morning announcing the five comedians competing for the most pointless prize in comedy (a golden statue of Jeremy Wells’ head).

Chris Parker, Josh Thomson, Justine Smith, Kura Forrester and Paul Ego will be going head-to-head this season, with Taskmaster Wells and his assistant Paul Williams returning.

An official premiere date has not been announced, but TVNZ said the show will be back “next month”.

As The Spinoff’s self-declared Taskmaster correspondent, I cannot wait.

Party leader Chris Luxon has congratulated National’s Sam Uffindell on his convincing win in the Tauranga byelection, saying he expects Uffindell to be “a great advocate for the people of Tauranga”.

Provisional results show Uffindell receiving more than twice the number of votes of his Labour rival Jan Tinetti, 10,981 to 4,893. Act’s Cameron Luxton received 1,991 votes and the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party’s Sue Grey received 917.

“This strong result reflects the tremendous hard work of Sam and our team,” said Luxon. “It also shows that the National Party is back in business.”

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has also offered her congratulations to Uffindell while praising Tinetti for returning “one of Labour’s better results in Tauranga in recent elections”.

“Jan is a huge advocate for the community she lives in, and has campaigned on the work we’ve been doing as a government to support families through the current global financial challenges, as well as our plan for economic recovery as our borders reopen and tourism resumes,” Ardern said. “Jan has proven why she’s such a valuable part of our team, and why in the recent reshuffle her responsibilities in education have grown.”