New Zealand's science-led response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

New Zealand has avoided the major health impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic due to a strict country-wide lockdown, the end-goal of which was elimination rather than mitigation and suppression. The New Zealand government’s use of scientific expertise, spanning public health, infectious diseases, genomics, modeling and immunology, has been one of the keys to the success of its SARS-CoV-2 elimination and control strategy.