Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles says Kiwis shouldn't treat this weekend like a weekend - instead we should stay home to help battle the spread of coronavirus.
Speaking last night to Seven Sharp, Ms Wiles, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, said it can be expected that New Zealand's number of confirmed Covid-19 cases will continue to rise, and the benefits of the lockdown may not be seen for up to two weeks.
"Don't give up hope - we're expecting this to happen, we're expecting cases to rise, but as long as we all do our bit, we will start to see them comes down - we will break those transmission chains," Ms Wiles said.
"Don't think because it's the weekend you can just sort of sneak out - we need you to stay at home.
"If we don't do this we are not going to get community transmission under control and we are going to be in lockdown for an awful lot longer."
Ms Wiles said Kiwis returning from overseas, as well as small pockets of community transmission of the virus will continue to add cases to the total number, because the virus has an incubation period of between two and ten days.
"What we know is that there will be Kiwis who have been overseas and have come home, so maybe in their bubble somebody is going to come down with Covid-19.
"We also know that there are these little pockets of community transmission, but we don't know how far they reach, so if somebody in those bubbles has contracted Covid-19 they may also come down with Covid-19.
"For many, many of us, if we remain in our bubbles and we don't have contact with anybody with Covid-19, nothing will happen, we will just stay as we are.
"The reason we're in lockdown is to make sure that any of those cases that pop up in a bubble do not go into another bubble, so that when the contact tracing is done, it's very easy to determine who has interacted with who, and there's no more interaction and no more spread."
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