In a statement on Friday, Hunter New England Health (HNEH) announced they would no longer provide a local daily case update.

The health authority said due to the centralisation of rapid antigen reporting at a state level, local case numbers were no longer an accurate reflection of COVID-19 across the Hunter New England region.

Despite this HNEH said they would still publish daily hospitalisation, ICU numbers and other important public health messaging on their social media sites.

Earlier:

GUNNEDAH has seen a small drop in COVID-19 case numbers after 22 new infections were reported on Friday.

That daily total marks a slight drop of 4 cases overnight, after 26 infections were added on Thursday

COVID-19 case numbers continue to blow out in Tamworth, with the city recording another 152 new infections, marking an increase of 38 cases after 114 infections were reported yesterday.

Inverell added 69 new infections, cases in Armidale dropped to 46, 26 new cases each were found in Moree and Narrabri, Liverpool Plains recorded 22 new cases, 11 in Glen Innes, four for both Tenterfield and Uralla and Walcha reported one new infection.

READ ALSO:

Across the Hunter New England Health (HNEH) district a total of 1554 new cases were reported.

There are currently 29,116 active cases in the district, 109 of these are being cared for in hospital and nine are in intensive care.

HNEH reported the death of a woman in her 60s from Lake Macquarie and offered sincere condolences to her friends and family.

The new case numbers come as NSW recorded its deadliest day since the pandemic began, with 29 people losing their life in the 24 hours to 8pm Thursday.

The number of fatalities broke the previous record reported on Thursday when 22 deaths were confirmed - that's the fifth time that grim record has been broken in the past week.

Across the state 63,018 new infections were recorded, 25,080 of those were from PCR tests and 37,938 came from self-reported rapid antigen tests.

Hospitalisations are also on the rise with 2525 people being cared for in hospitals and three more patients admitted to intensive care in the latest update.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: