But left unchecked, the pandemic would have seen more than a quarter of the Kiwi workforce without a job.

A raft of Treasury modelling released on Tuesday shows a wide range of possible outcomes for the South Pacific nation, which is almost three weeks into a country-wide shutdown to fight the spread of COVID-19.

The modelling suggests the Kiwi economy, as a whole, may not recover coronavirus-induced losses until 2024.

For now, the New Zealand government remains focused on minimising job losses, and is preparing further fiscal stimulus to assist with that aim.

"Certainly one of my main reasons for being in politics is that keeping people in work and jobs," Finance Minister Grant Robertson said.

"And so I will make sure that whatever we do, is focused around that."

The government has provided support and stimulus to the bill of around $NZ22 billion ($A21 billion) to date.

That has included boosts to spending on wage subsidies and welfare payments, providing tax subsidies, and injections into the health system.

The Treasury modelling suggests that with a further $NZ20 billion ($A19 billion) of targeted fiscal support, NZ's unemployment figure could peak at 8.5 per cent in the June quarter of this year, then fall back to 5.5 per cent next year.

The official unemployment rate prior to the pandemic arriving in New Zealand was 4.0 per cent.

"We re working towards making sure we keep unemployment as low as possible," Mr Robertson said.

"We now want ... to establish more economic activity, have people coming back into work and at the same time, work on those recovery plans that start to redeploy people to different industries, retrain people."

Treasury Secretary Caralee McLiesh said GDP growth could fall by as little as 0.5 per cent this year or as much as 23.5 per cent.

The best-case forecast relies on New Zealand untightening the screws of its severe lockdown next week, as hoped, and spending another month in a lessened lockdown.

That scenario relies on borders being closed to foreign visitors "for up to 12 months".

The new stimulus is expected to be released this week. ahead of a crunch Cabinet meeting on Monday.

That meeting will decide whether to extend, lessen, or regionalise the country's lockdown due to end on April 23.

The budget is going ahead on May 14, with a scheduled September 19 election dependent on containment of COVID-19.

Health officials announced a further four deaths in New Zealand from Kiwis suffering from COVID-19, bringing the country's death toll to nine.

Also on Tuesday morning, New Zealand media giant NZME announced 200 job losses - around 15 per cent of its workforce - and remaining staff would be asked to take a pay cut.

Australian Associated Press