Te Whatu Ora Southern has taken to social media to ask southerners not to visit hospitals if they have Covid-19.

“We have multiple Covid-19 infections and exposures in our Southern hospitals. Unfortunately, some of these infections have come from visitors coming to our hospitals to visit their loved ones,” a Facebook post said on Thursday.

The public health agency’s Southern director of operations, Hamish Brown, said on Thursday that there were 25 patients who had tested positive for Covid in Dunedin Hospital, five in Southland Hospital, and one in Lakes District Hospital.

“We are asking the public to only visit loved ones in hospital if you are well with no Covid-19 symptoms, and we strongly encourage all visitors to wear a mask,” he said.

“Please help us protect your loved ones, the Southern community, and our staff.”

Last week, Te Whatu Ora asked New Zealanders to make sure they were up to date with Covid-19 vaccinations because wastewater testing results, case counts, and deaths all indicated case numbers were rising.

National case numbers rose to an average of 1749 new daily cases on October 31, but dropped to 1069 on November 6 and 849 on November 13. However, these figures were based on self-reporting, and wastewater testing has been trending upwards since October 22.

Outside the main centres, the Southern health district, which serves the Southland and Otago regions, had the largest number of new cases with 571 reported in the week to November 6 and 635 in the week to November 13.