Greater Sydney's coronavirus lockdowns are could be extended for another month despite measures being tightened.
That's the opinion of clinical epidemiologist Professor Nancy Baxter who says the number of infectious people out in the community remains far too high.
"It's like a bushfire right - if you leave some embers, they're going to start into flames," Professor Baxter told Today.
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"And that's what happens if you don't drive the numbers down before you open up.
"The numbers don't need to be zero, they don't actually need to be close to zero but it that is number of people who weren't out in the community when they're infectious, that's the number that needs to get to zero. They're pretty far from that.
"So how long is a lockdown going to last? I don't know. But I would say we're looking more like a month than a week."
Premier Gladys Berejikilian had already flagged that lockdowns could be extended past July 30 but has refused to speculate about an end date.
Yesterday 98 cases were recorded in New South Wales, 20 of those were infectious within the community.
But in some good news, Professor Baxter believes Sydney has "controlled things" by tightening lockdown rules at the weekend.
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"If you think about what would have happened in Sydney without the lockdown measures they imposed, it is really frightening.
"They kind of managed to get a cap on the numbers. With the (tighter) measures, it takes a while for those to take effect for you to see the results. Hopefully over the next few days we're going to see those numbers start to go down and more strict lockdowns won't be needed.
"But people have to be adaptable. Governments have to be adaptable.
"If what they're doing is not working, they have to start doing something different. I think one of the things I would say is they took too long to decide to do something different. And hopefully that mistake won't be repeated."
The Premier will give her case numbers update at 11am.
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