Over the weekend, 165 new cases of Covid-19 were announced in connection to the Delta outbreak - 82 on Saturday and 83 on Sunday. Plank told RNZ's Morning Report case numbers from over the weekend were "roughly" consistent with modelling. "I think it does look like the numbers are starting to plateau and we can take some encouragement from that," Plank said. "But the week ahead really is the crunch week in terms of seeing whether the numbers start to come down." At least two weeks more in alert level 4 for Auckland was a sensible time frame in which to come back and review how the case numbers were going, Plank said.

Source: Otago Daily Times August 29, 2021 21:11 UTC