A Kiwi stranded in South Africa is desperate to get home.
Joy Veint says she and five other Kiwis have been left "dumped" in Cape Town after their flights out of the country were cancelled.
Veint was travelling on the Norwegian Spirit cruise ship but is now stuck with no way to get back to New Zealand after the spread of COVID-19 grounded planes and caused borders around the world to be closed.
Veint had a ticket on Emirates but found out at the airport her flight had been cancelled.
"They will not let us leave Cape Town because Dubai has shut down and you have to be in transit, you have to have an onward ticket," Veint told Newshub.
She says a charter plane should be sent to fly her and her fellow travellers out.
"We've gone from being in a safe place to being dumped in an airport where they don't give a shit about us," she said.
"We're just hanging tight."
Veint said it's been a frustrating experience on board the ship.
"There's been no communication, they shut the internet down, we haven't been able to talk to anybody because I believe that they just don't want us to cause a panic...the whole world's shutting down."
As Government around the world scramble to contain COVID-19, many countries have gone into lockdown in a bid to stop the virus's spread.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced last week that New Zealand's borders would close to non-residents and on Monday the Government raised the country's alert level to 3, to be raised again on Wednesday to 4, the highest level.
It would remain at level 4 for at least four weeks, Ardern said.
There have been 102 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand so far, with two of those cases being treated as community transmission.
Globally, more than 360,000 cases have been confirmed with the death toll standing at over 15,400.
