More than 20,000 cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the last 24 hour reporting period as a new Omicron subvariant continues to cause uncertainty in the community.

The state reported 20,050 positive cases on Friday, including 12,355 cases from rapid antigen tests and 7,695 from PCR tests.

The number of new cases is only 37 less than recorded on Thursday, when NSW reported 20,087 cases.

New infection numbers appears to have stabilised after a data glitch on Wednesday saw a glut of positive rapid test results from Sunday and Monday push the number of positive results to just over 34,000.

Cases are expected to double over the next month as the highly transmissible BA2 subvariant spreads in the community, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard warned on Wednesday.

BA2 is expected to become “by far the dominant strain in NSW” within weeks, Acting Chief Health Officer Marianne Gale said.

Some 1060 people are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, with 32 in ICUs, and 15 on ventilators.

Of the six deaths reported on Friday, five were men and one was a woman.

Two were in their 70s and 80s and four were in their 90s.

One person had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, three had received two doses and two people had received booster doses.

Two of the people who died were from Sydney’s northern beaches, one was from western Sydney, one from Sydney’s inner west, one from northern Sydney and one was from the Snowy Valley region.

The total number of COVID-19 related deaths in the state is now 2007, after the milestone of 2000 deaths during the pandemic was passed on Thursday.

In vaccinations, more than 95 per cent of people aged 16 and over have received a first dose, and 94.5 per cent of those people had two doses as of Wednesday.

Some 83.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 have had one dose of a vaccine and 79.1 have had two doses.

In children aged five to 11, 48.6 per cent have had one dose of a vaccine.

In the booster rollout, 57.8 per cent of people 16 and over have had a third dose, representing 61.7 per cent of the eligible population.

– AAP