Auckland couple Andrew and Wawang Prins know firsthand just how devastating Delta can be.
"It's hard for me. At night time I'm still screaming and crying," Wawang told Newshub.
Her father recently died of COVID-19 in Indonesia.
"He was very fit and healthy. He was 75 but he would still climb up on the roof and chop down trees. He wasn't what you'd call an 'old 75' - he loved being outdoors," Andrew, Wawang's husband, said.
And then just 11 days later, her younger sister Susi lost her life to the virus too.
"Susi was 40. She passed away a week or so before her 41st birthday. She was fit and healthy, too," he says.
His wife desperately rang over a hundred hospitals in Jakarta to try and get Susi the help she needed, but they were all full. She died at home.
"The government came with all this gear and everything, wrapped my sister with a plastic bag, and then just took her away," she said.
Wawang's family had to watch hundreds of diggers prepare holes to bury people in.
"One by one they were putting [people] in the ground," she says.
They say the hardest part was not being able to say goodbye.
"When they're buried on the day they die in an emergency graveyard, no funerals, we just don't have any idea here," Andrew told Newshub.
Their message to Kiwis is clear.
"Be grateful that we've got lockdowns, because it stops that sort of thing from happening here. If it was uncontrolled - we just don't have the facilities to cope," said Andrew.
"Lockdowns are not pleasant, we don't enjoy it, but we know they're essential to slow the spread. Follow the rules... COVID is real."
