International visitors to New Zealand must self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday.
Ardern said the "unprecedented and far-reaching" measure would come into effect from midnight Sunday and affect all inbound travellers except those from Pacific island nations.
She said remote New Zealand had been relatively unscathed by coronavirus so far, with six confirmed cases and no fatalities, but the evidence showed the numbers would inevitably rise in the face of a global pandemic.
"But the scale of how many cases we get and how fast we get them is something we should do as much as we can to slow," she told reporters.
"We must go hard and we must go early."