With New Zealand moving to Alert Level 2 today, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has outlined what Kiwis can do to help us take the next step towards Level 1 - or fall back to another lockdown.
Dr Bloomfield spoke to TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning about reaching the milestone and said Kiwis should be proud of what we've done so far.
"We're not out of the woods but we're actually carving our own path through it which is a really good position to be in," Dr Bloomfield said.
Dr Bloomfield said the recent trend in case numbers in New Zealand - two zeros in the last two days - is a positive sign as we move to Level 2 and it's those sorts of numbers at this stage that will give the Ministry of Health confidence to recommend a move to Level 1.
"What we'll be looking for is keeping case numbers either at zero or very low and we'll be looking for businesses and schools and others to be working effectively with core public health measures around distancing and hygiene," he said.
"And the key thing - and this is the make-or-break thing - is people not going out if they're unwell. That's critical because that's the one thing that could lead to the possibility of infection being spread.
"If there's one thing I'd ask people to do, it's if you do feel unwell, stay at home."
If that advice isn't followed, Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand could very easily be forced back into another lockdown.
"It's about whether we can ring-fence any cases quickly, contract-trace very rapidly and stop any further spread.
"As we came into Alert Level 2 and 3 the first time, we had quite a lot of spread happening out in the community so we had to put those tight restrictions in place to break the chains of transmission.
"The idea now is to identify the cases quickly, contact trace, isolate people so we don't have those longer chains of transmission."
Multiple countries have been forced to return to lockdown or extend them for large amounts of time due to an inability to control the virus' spread.
Lebanon recently announced it had to return to a nationwide lockdown after a spike in cases and some major cities in the US such as Los Angeles have warned they will be extending theirs by up to three months to quash Covid-19.
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