A Kiwi epidemiologist based in Australia says expect a big increase in cases in New Zealand's community Delta outbreak and a longer lockdown as a result.
Professor Tony Blakely from Melbourne University says cases will rise quickly over the coming days as the virus is circled.
"You're going to see a big increase," Blakely told 1 NEWS on Thursday evening.
"And then, hopefully, what you'll see is a sort of decrease in the cases that are infectious whilst in the community and you'll see an increase in the cases that have been in quarantine throughout their whole infectious period over the next seven to 10 days.
"When the number of cases gets down to zero of people who have been out in the community whilst infectious for about two or three days - that's the rule we use here where you can let go of lockdown.
"That's how it's down by the textbook and that's how it was done last lockdown in Melbourne but it's not working this time."
The current outbreak has led to 21 community cases so far after a 58-year-old man from Devonport first tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday.
Since his positive result, it has been confirmed he has the more-infectious Delta variant with genome sequencing discovering a potential link to the border from a recent Sydney returnee.
The Ministry of Health has also identified a large list of locations of interest where cases may have been while infectious including bars, a church, supermarkets, education facilities and malls.
With so many populous locations of interest already identified, Blakely said it's likely the lockdown will be extended in Auckland.
"If you see no cases arising outside of the Coromandel and Auckland, I wouldn't be surprised to see those parts of New Zealand liberated," Blakely said.
"But I can't see Auckland or Coromandel getting out of lockdown for at least 10 days. It will take two weeks to go through that path I've talked about before you can confidentially come out because the key thing you're looking for is a good three days or so with no community cases appearing while infectious."
The Prime Minister has scheduled a press conference at 3pm on Friday to announce any changes to alert levels around the country.
In the meantime, Blakely conceded there are a number of concerns for New Zealand's current situation.
"Firstly, you have these things called mystery cases where people pop up and you don't know where they got it from because as soon as you've got mystery cases, that tells you that you've got transmission happening out in the community."
The other big issue Blakely identified was New Zealand's QR code scanning rates.
Earlier this month, Ministry of Health data showed New Zealanders had fallen out of the habit of scanning once again, with daily scans falling to numbers not seen since before the Wellington Delta case scare in June.
On Monday August 3, just 498,723 scans were recorded on the Covid Tracer app - the lowest number of scans on the app since 22 June.
Blakely said low scanning numbers will make tracking down potential contacts difficult.
"Venues like a pub or night club, if everyone had been QR coding when they went there then contact tracers will quickly find them.
"But if a lot of those people haven't been QR coding, it's going to be hard to get your arms around them and contain this outbreak."
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