However, he said it isn t likely New Zealand will go into lockdown as a result of the new Northland case. It s not great but it s not the scenario we were facing in August when we didn t know the link to the border, he said. The situation where we would be looking to lockdown is when we don t have that link to the border and we would be looking at 50 to 100 cases. That s where we were in August in Auckland and we really needed that lockdown.
Hendy expects only around 10 more cases will emerge from the Northland case. When we catch a case like this early in the chain of transmission, then we are going to tend to see smaller numbers, he said.