On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country's alert level would be raised to 3 before going to level 4 - the highest level - at 1159pm on Wednesday.

The move came as community transmission of COVID-19 was confirmed in the country.

Bridges admitted that so far the Government was on the right track with how it was dealing with the pandemic.

"I think we've got to a very good place in as much as, we're at level 4 to deal with the health and the lockdown and I'm all for that," Bridges said.

"In terms of economics I think the Government now has a full preparedness to do what it takes and to effectively pump in the cash to keep businesses going."

However, he said, the job now was to ask: "have we got it quite right?"

"Economically I'm fully in support of the job support package, but are the settings quite right? I'm hearing from businesses that actually potentially they aren't."

He said for many workers the wage subsidy of $585 a week just wasn't enough.

"Maybe we want to do what some other countries have done, for example. As a business says to their relatively well-paid employee 'you know what, we're going to reduce your hours' the Government picks up that slack - maybe to the tune of 80 percent," he said.

"I'm not suggesting I have all the answers, I just think we can constructively ask these questions so that we improve our response as a country with the sole aim of coming out of this sooner and stronger".

Although the economic effect of placing the country in lockdown is staggering, experts have warned that the cost - both in economic and human terms - of doing nothing will be far worse.