My kiwi friend, a doc, thinks that this is a late approach. While Germany etc. was already in lockdown, NZ still was hesitant. So, he calls this a delayed approach as well.
Also a kiwi. Everyone is hesitant and it's natural to be. By locking down we are guaranteeing that people's businesses will fold and a large number of people will lose their jobs / livelihoods. No leader wants to do that unless absolutely necessary.
We've had self isolation for people coming in from overseas in place for a few weeks and as soon as that progressed to community transmission we've locked down. We had 50 cases where 2 could not be traced back to international travel. We're now at 200 cases (as of yesterday) and still no deaths.
I think hindsight is always 20/20 and I think NZ has done the right thing in appropriate timelines given what we knew at the time.
We are fortunate that we are a remote island in the south pacific that makes it easier for us to close borders and contain this much easier than other countries can.
I agree this is a delayed approach. We squandered our greatest resource to fight this: our border.
We could not have rolled better starting stats to have:
1) A giant moat around us.
2) Only really four international airports (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown).
3) All these are destination airports (as opposed to transit hubs where Singapore or Heathrow are classic examples).
I flew through Asia when SARS was in full swing and just now in February-March (just my luck) and have gone through borders where this was taken seriously earlier. NZs earlier "additional border controls" were pathetic. When I returned in mid March there was:
1) No thermal screening of passengers.
2) No health form to fill in.
3) Australian, Singapore and US!? passports were allowed to use the e-gates.
4) No additional cleaning of high risk surfaces.
5) No protective measures for the customs and border staff.
6) The only extra measure was a tiny pamphlet being handed out which essentially said: "If you feel sick, please ring healthline or a GP and tell them you have travelled."
Instead when I landed on 13th March:
1) I got a pamphlet handed to me which most passengers ignored and threw away
2) Had to touch the e-gates (which had no evidence of cleaning) that were touched by hundreds of other travellers
3) Could not wash my hands properly because soap ran out in a couple of the bathrooms
4) For extra points I could have jumped on a airport to city centre bus full of tourists from Europe (I got picked up instead).
and then they announced with a 48 hour warning that the border was shutting and then planes were packed coming in as people tried to "beat the compulsary quarantine".
The border should have been shut before the first case was detected here.
There would have been limited community support for closing the border prior to the first case. It was a distant problem while running rampant across Asia, even more-so as it decimated Europe.
