The country has been praised for taking a hard and early approach to going back into lockdown. 

Auckland has moved to Alert Level 3, and the rest of the country at Level 2, after three new community cases popped up in South Auckland. 

One of the three new community cases of COVID-19 is a woman who works at at LSG Sky Chefs - employed in laundry and sometimes catering work for airlines.

Otago University epidemiologist Michael Baker told Mike Hosking that he doubts that Covid could be spread through laundry.

"It would be very unusual this virus was transmitted on a surface like that. And in fact, I don't think it's been documented anywhere. And we're still really looking at transmission from, you know, via droplets or aerosols from contact with someone."

Asked if it would be international crew or transit, Baker says: "It's really hard to know. I mean this is what the next few days are going to tell us and that's why, obviously we're going for a lockdown because we don't know about the other potential cases in the community."

He says that the virus could have been transmitted for two or three weeks, and it makes sense the country is all in lockdown. 

He supported the Government's approach this week and said the vaccine rollout - frontline workers will be the first to start getting jabs this weekend but most of the population won't be vaccinated until the second half of 2021 - would help sustain the elimination approach.

LISTEN ABOVE