New Zealanders should expect to see around 200 Covid-19 community cases a day this month in the current Delta outbreak, modelling suggests.
On Saturday, a record 160 cases were confirmed, followed by 143 on Sunday .
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Breakfast those large numbers were not unexpected, though.
"At the current point that we're at in the outbreak and Delta being in New Zealand, we are and have expected numbers to continue to increase," she said.
Ardern added that at her post Cabinet press conference on Monday afternoon, Government would be sharing modelling which looks ahead to what New Zealand's daily Covid-19 cases may look like.
The press conference will be broadcast live on TVNZ1 and streamed on 1news.co.nz and on the 1News Facebook page at 4pm.
"Some of our modelling is suggesting at the moment that through the course of November we could reach up to the 200 cases per day mark," Ardern said.
"At that point we are predicting that vaccinations will have impact and we'll not necessarily see them rise beyond that."
Ardern said vaccinations have already had an impact when it comes to Covid-19 cases in intensive care, with just two on Sunday.
But while vaccinating the population continues, Auckland and parts of Waikato remain at Alert Level 3. The rest of the country is at Level 2.
"Delta is with us around the world, we still, however, have choices around how we manage it and New Zealand is a place where we will manage it very aggressively, we will minimise and we will seek to protect our population," Ardern said.
Earlier on Breakfast, though, Covid-19 modeller Professor Shaun Hendy said the Government should consider a short Level 4 circuit-breaker for Auckland as Covid-19 cases are expected to rise in the coming weeks.
Cabinet is set to make a decision on alert level settings for Auckland and parts of Waikato on Monday at 4pm.
Hendy said a circuit-breaker could help "bring case numbers down to really bring our contact tracers back into the game".
However, Ardern said she wanted to "push back" on those comments.
"Our contact tracers, of course, have two jobs, well previously in an elimination strategy there's a big focus on trying to work out how someone came to have Covid, and the reason, of course, that so much focus is on that is to see whether or not going backwards you (see if you) missed anything because that helps in an elimination strategy," she said.
"Of course where we are now is making sure you're kind of doing what you can to stop onward transmission as well, so very focussed on making sure the contacts you have around you, everyone's in isolation so you're stopping that onward transmission.
"That really intensive detective work, which can sometimes include hours of interviewing looking backwards to try and figure out where someone got it from, yes we still ask those questions but it's not quite as hefty as it has been in the past and that's not just about workload, that's just about the nature of your strategy as well."
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