People who break Covid-19 rules could soon face fines of up to $12,000. 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in this afternoon's press conference, announced an increase in fines for breaking the restrictions around Covid-19. 

"Each breach of the rules risks Covid spreading, so it's important the penalties reflect the seriousness of the actions," Arden said. 

Fines were original set at $300, or $1000 when imposed by the courts. 

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"It's Cabinet's view that these fees don't properly reflect the significant social and economic impacts of a single case of Covid-19 getting out in the community, in order they act as a sufficient incentive to play by the rules." 

The maximum infringement fee will be increased from $300 to $4000 for individuals. For companies, the maximum will increase from $300 to $12,000. 

But where those fines are imposed by the courts, the maximum will move to $12,000 for individuals and $15,000 for companies. 

The PM stressed those are the maximum levels, and highlighted cases of people who had broken out of MIQ.

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"It has really been in response to people's view that we didn't quite have an infringement regime that reflected the severity of breaches," Ardern said.

They will take effect as early as November, subject to the passing of the Covid-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. 

There are 14 new community cases of Covid-19 today, all classes as in the Auckland region. 

They include one new case in the Upper Hauraki, Waikato, a household contact of the previous cases announced yesterday. They are classed as Auckland cases as they fall within the Counties Mānakau DHB.

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All but one of the cases have been epidemiologically linked to the current outbreak. 

That takes the total number of cases in this outbreak to 1,085, but 790 of those have now recovered. 

Auckland is due to move to alert level 3 at 11.59pm tonight, while a Health Act section 70 order was issued yesterday increasing restrictions in Hauraki. 

There were 50,196 doses of the vaccine administered yesterday, bringing the total to 4,762,679, including 3,118,082 first doses and 1,644,597 second doses.