PM Jacinda Ardern spoke to Mike Hosking on Monday morning about the government's response to the coronavirus outbreak.
A New Zealand man who left his wife in Beijing says there are small signs of the deadly coronavirus outbreak getting worse.
Kelvin Gin landed in New Zealand on Saturday with his three children and said China's once thunderous capital city had been "dead quiet" in recent weeks.
"We sat there just twiddling our thumbs for a while and then it just started to get worse and worse," Gin told the Herald from Christchurch.
The former Colmar Brunton employee said the numbers of face masks were slowly dwindling and he hadn't seen any hand sanitiser in around three weeks.
In the local supermarkets, occasionally there would be a shortage of bread or the price of products would be inflated, with apples reaching prices of $10-$20.
Kelvin Gin and his children on their way to Beijing International Airport. Photo / Supplied
"Those signs were around and then you start reading the media and you start thinking maybe we should step out of this for a while," Gin said.
Other ominous signs included walking past train stations and bus stops to see people constantly checking their temperatures.
The viral coronavirus outbreak which began in Wuhan, China, had infected more than 14,550 people and killed 304, AP reported.
Most of the 304 deaths had been in central Hubei province, where illness from the new virus was first detected in December.
But given the circumstances, the Beijing local government had done a "great job" to try and manage the situation as best they could, Gin said.
Measures included limiting inner-city travel and closing down almost everything, apart from the odd supermarket.
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More or less a trailing spouse, Gin said the family moved to China from Jakarta at the start of 2020 to start a new chapter of their lives.
His wife, an Irish national, was working for a non-profit organisation in Beijing and while she could travel to New Zealand despite being a foreign national, Gin thought she would stay.
"We were planning for her to come over at some stage but that's been looked over, but there is a caveat in that where immediate family can join you," he said.
"It's all a bit up in the air but her role is part of the solution, I think. She's probably going to stay over there."
Supermarkets would sometimes run out of bread and other products amid the outbreak. Photo / Supplied
The public was paying a lot more attention to cleanliness amid the outbreak, Gin said.
