New Zealand will move to level 3 of lockdown on Monday, April 27 at 11:59pm. Alert level 3 will be held for two weeks and then Cabinet will assess whether to move down another level.
Kiwis will find out at 4pm tomorrow whether the country will come out of lockdown and move to alert level 3.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement at this afternoon's daily coronavirus update, accompanied by Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield.
When asked if we were likely to stay in level 4 for another week until contact tracing is at a gold standard, Arden said: "We are not going to get into hypotheticals."
But Bloomfield responded to a number of questions that have been raised about contact-tracing, saying that the system was being improved to be able to trace 80 per cent of the close contacts from a new case within three days.
There are nine new coronavirus cases in New Zealand and one new death since yesterday, he said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is giving her final press conference before she decides if the lockdown can be lifted. Photo / Pool
The death brings the total toll to 12 and is of a man in Invercargill at home who was linked to the Bluff wedding cluster. It is the first coronavirus death in the community.
The man, aged in his 70s, died in his Kingswell home on Tuesday evening. The Bluff wedding cluster has been connected to more than 90 cases, including the death of the groom's father.
Bloomfield said it was important to get a good understanding of the death so a post-mortem was ordered - leading to the delay in confirmation that it was Covid-related.
There were still 16 significant clusters, with 12 more cases now linked to those clusters.
Ardern said she and Bloomfield discussed New Zealand cases on an individual level, where overseas thousands of cases were being tracked daily, and that made New Zealand "lucky" to be in this position.
She said New Zealand has proved that it was able to be in a position to potentially eliminate Covid-19.
There were 4146 tests processed yesterday, bringing the total number of tests conducted to 83,224.
He said there were 131 healthcare workers with Covid-19, with 43 having recovered. About half of them had contracted the virus in the workplace, but a relatively small number had caught the virus from patients.
"We continue to keep a close eye on this," he said.
Bloomfield said 442 tests took place in Auckland yesterday, and with three-quarters of the results known, none have so far tested positive.
Other targeted testing in Queenstown, Canterbury and the Waikato had not returned any positive tests.
Coming out of lockdown
Arden said Cabinet was meeting at 10.30am tomorrow and a decision on whether New Zealand will come out of lockdown would be announced to the public at 4pm.
She said a move to level 3 would not be a return to pre-Covid life, and the ongoing battle was a long-term one.