It's been obvious for several days that level 4 was going to be with us for longer. Bloomfield talked about his ministry being on a pathway to a gold-standard contact-tracing system, which he said was essential to come out of lockdown.

He said tracing down 80 per cent of close contacts to virus carriers within three days could be achieved within the next week.

A member of that Cabinet Covid team is of course Winston Peters, who has been putting out some confusing messages over the past few days.

He will now no doubt claim we could have been incarcerated for longer without his intervention.

Peters told us at the weekend there is "no value" in trying to save people who have coronavirus if it means greater social damage is caused.

We need to save our economy as fast as we can before further damage is caused, he said, adding the secret is we keep a sense of balance.

He rightfully talked about all sorts of things like depression, suicide, domestic violence and a whole lot of other social issues that cause far greater social damage.

"In the end the only thing that's going to save lives isn't just medical expertise - but an economy that's capable of providing the utilities to face the crisis."

He also hit back at those who say alert level 3 isn't much different to level 4.

Recently, National's Judith Collins said level 3 is just like level 4 but with KFC.

"It's sad people have to get political in times like this," he said.

Now that is the pot calling the kettle black.