Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today nearly 1000 people had sent in complaints about price-gouging at supermarkets after a dedicated email was set up.
Earlier this week, Ardern told New Zealanders to report unfair high prices to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
About 990 emails had so far been sent. The most common complaint was the high price of cauliflower, but also hand sanitiser, bread, meat and garlic also featured.
Ardern said those complaints will be taken seriously.
"The process for dealing with complaints is being worked through... and we will involve traders so they have a chance to respond."
The demand for food shouldn't be falling, Ardern said, and any food producers should contact the Ministry for Primary Industries if they are throwing away food.
She repeated calls for everyone to stay home and save lives. That would be the best hope for the lockdown to be eased after four weeks.
Lifting the lockdown wouldn't happen until the virus was back under control, and communities could stamp out quickly when new cases arose.
She said the lockdown was asking a lot of New Zealanders, and they were mostly doing an "amazing job". Those who weren't taking it seriously needed to realise how important the lockdown rules were.
Ardern checked in with police regularly to see if they had the resources to do their job, and the feedback was that they did, she said.
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Creating jobs
Meanwhile, ministers Shane Jones, Phil Twyford and David Parker were all looking at how to get the jobless into jobs with "shovel-ready" projects, she said.
Work was also underway at how to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects, she said.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said a list of projects was being worked on.
He responded to claims that he wasn't releasing enough economic data, saying it needed to be prodcued "more quickly".
That was still being worked through, he said.
The GDP could drop by as much as 17% while unemployment could reach double digits, he said.
The prediction of 30% unemployment was "extreme".
Rent relief for commercial businesses was under discussion, and more will be said about that in a couple of days.
News media were struggling with the drop in advertising revenue, and Robertson said a unit in the Treasury was looking at what the Government could do, such as loans or equity purchases, to help essential services.
"The media is an area that sits in a broader set of recovery packages that we're looking at in the medium term."
Media companies were already under pressure before the lockdown and were hugely important, he said.
Testing ramping up
Ardern said the most affected age range of people with Covid-19 is "far and away" 20 to 29 year olds.
"They are our vector for transmission."
She said the 61 new cases today seemed "heartening" on the face of it, but she said it was too early to say if the lockdown was slowing transmission.
Transmission in the community prior to the lockdown may yet be "rearing its head".
She warned New Zealanders against being complacent on the back of the lower growth in numbers of confirmed cases.
She said there was not a full picture of community transmission, and more testing capacity would provide a fuller picture. Clusters showed how quickly Covid-19 spreads.
She said the Government needed to know about community transmission accurately and as soon as possible.
Ardern said there were over 2000 tests today and the average over the last week was 1843 tests a day.
She wanted more consistency around daily test numbers.
Testing capacity was always there, and there hadn't been a day where the number of test requests exceeded capacity.
GPs should have enough swabs for testing, Ardern said. If they didn't, that would be a distribution, not a capacity issue.
Broader criteria, issued today, would see more testing - now anyone with upper respiratory symptoms - such as a sore throat, or shortness of breath - should be tested.
Ardern defended the decision not to change the case definition to test Covid-19 earlier, saying that definition was always based on expert advice, and clinicians have always had discretion to test where appropriate.
Support packages
Ardern said the $56 million support package for Maori communities and the $27 million for social service agencies had allowed 11,000 care packages to be delivered so far, with 30,000 to be delivered by the end of the week.
The packages had also allowed Covid-19 testing for vulnerable communities.
About $12 million of the $27 million package had been given to agencies fighting domestic violence, she said.
Ardern said the work underway to help Maori communities was still being rolled out, and "where we see need, we will meet it".
More cases will 'spring up'
Earlier today, Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay told media that there are now 708 confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand.
Fourteen people are in hospital, with two of those in ICU in a stable condition.
There are 82 people who have recovered. No further deaths have occurred.
McElnay said more than half of the cases were due to overseas travel, and about 1% were community transmission.
But she conceded that the limits on the testing regime so far did little to show the true extent of Covid-19 community transmission in New Zealand.
A new directive to test more and looser testing criteria would lead to more tests, an increase in confirmed cases, and a clearer picture of the prevalence of Covid-19 in communities, she said.
The growth rate in the number of new cases continued to decline, with the announcement today of 61 new confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases in New Zealand.
But while that was "encouraging", McElnay said it was early days and more cases will spring up as testing capacity increased to 5000 tests a day.
