Now is the time we will see the effects of Auckland's move to Level 3 on case numbers, according to a Covid-19 modeller.
There were 45 new community cases to report on Wednesday, up from eight the day prior.
There are 19 new community cases to report on Thursday - 18 in Auckland and one in Waikato.
Meanwhile, Auckland's vaccine rollout slowed on Wednesday, with 14,376 doses administered.
University of Canterbury professor Michael Plank told 1News he is "hoping like everyone that yesterday was a blip rather than the beginning of an upward trend".
Plank said while he's "not so worried about the household contacts and the known contacts" as "a lot of those cases are expected, but what is worrying is the number of unlinked cases".
"With [Auckland's] move to Level 3, increasing number of people out and about and in the workplace, and so there's a greater risk that those unlinked cases could have passed the virus on."
He said due to the incubation period, "now is about the time that we start to see the effects of the alert level change coming through in those case numbers", adding that it will be "really important to look for the trend over the coming days and into the weekend".
"If we start to see the numbers tracking upwards, that will be a sign that Level 3 isn't enough to keep the outbreak under control and prevent it from growing."
Plank said it would be "very risky" for Auckland to move to Level 2 next week as planned.
"We still don't have a clear picture of whether Level 3 is keeping the outbreak contained or whether cases are actually going to track upwards at Level 3.
"If we move to Level 2 at present, there could be a risk that we're just adding fuel to the fire and cases could start to spiral upwards very, very quickly."
He added that while cases are not spread out across Auckland but in concentrated areas, different alert levels within the same city would be "very difficult to implement" as "people move around the city a lot".
"We've seen with this outbreak that it has jumped from one suburb to another and so, although it appears one week that the cases are in this particular area, it does change over time.
"It would be very difficult to have one street in Level 3 and the next street over in Level 2 so I think the implementation would be very challenging."
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