Covid-19 modeller Michael Plank says this week is crunch time for the number of new infections to wind down - or not.
Cabinet will meet today to discuss how long Auckland and Northland will remain under alert level 4.
University of Canterbury Professor Michael Plank told the Morning Report if the current alert level 4 restrictions are enough to control the outbreak, the daily number of new cases should start to dip this week.
He said at the moment the growth of the outbreak appears to have slowed.
"It does look like the numbers are starting to plateau, and we can take some encouragement from that."
The past three days have seen 70, the 82, then 83 new community cases announced.
Dr Plank said the Delta outbreak is taking a much longer time to get under control because the variant is so transmissible, and it could continue throughout next month.
"It's possible we could see case numbers down to around 10 per day within the latter part of September."
