New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern [Source: TVNZ]

New Zealand will go in lockdown in the next forty-eight hours, as the alert level was upgraded to level 3 this afternoon.

The New Zealand Prime Minister says the next 48 hours is the time required to ensure essential services are in place.

Jacinda Ardern says these decisions will place the most significant restriction on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history and warns it should not be taken lightly.

Ardern says supermarkets, doctors, pharmacies, service stations, access to essential banking services will all be available throughout New Zealand at every alert level.

In the meantime, she says they will be working through practices like those used overseas to ensure that social distancing is maintained at supermarkets when people are undertaking essential shops.

Non-essential businesses in New Zealand must now close. All bars, restaurants, cafes, gyms, cinemas, pools, museums, libraries, playgrounds and any other place where the public congregate must close their face to face function.

She says over the next 48 hours as NZ move to Level 4, takeaway services must move to close their operations.

All indoor and outdoor events cannot proceed which means they New Zealanders is now preparing to go into self-isolation as a nation.

Schools will be closed from tomorrow, except to the children of essential workers such as doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and police – this will give them time to plan.

This will be temporary, and schools will close entirely from midnight Wednesday.