evidence: New Zealand has been in a COVID lull for the past two months, but with the BA.5 variant on the rise and more than 10,000 new daily cases reported this week, it appears we are now at the start of a second Omicron wave. [...] BA.5 was first detected in the New Zealand community in April and cases have been appearing consistently since May. It has quickly risen to 32% of sequenced community cases and looks set to become the dominant variant in the next week. It already is dominant in other countries. [...] Strong uptake of fourth doses in older age groups, as well as third doses among the one million New Zealanders currently eligible, is the best way we have to mitigate this wave.