“It’s bedtime, darling, pop back to bed. I’ll come and see you in a second. I’ll come and see you in a minute. OK, sorry, everybody,” Ardern says with a wry smile.

“Well, that was a bedtime fail, wasn’t it? I thought here’s a moment I’ll do a Facebook Live, it will be nice and safe,” she said.

“Does anyone else have kids escape like three, four times after bedtime? Thankfully, my mum’s here so she can help out.

“OK, where were we?” Ardern tried to continue.

Watch: BBC Dad breaks silence on TV interview gatecrashed by kids

The little voice returns: “What’s taking so long?”

“I’m sorry, darling, it is taking so long. OK. I’m sorry, everyone. I’m going to just go and put Neve back to bed. Because this is well past her bedtime. Thanks for joining me.”

While not as dramatic as the moment the children of Korea analyst Robert Kelly interrupting his 2017 BBC interview, it is not the first time Neve has stolen the limelight.

In 2018 Ardern became the second prime minister in the world – after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto – to give birth while in office, later taking Neve onto the floor of the UN Assembly in New York.

On Wednesday, stores in New Zealand’s biggest city Auckland flung their doors open for the first time in three months as the city – which is the epicentre of the country’s Delta outbreak – gradually reopened.

Shops filled up within hours of reopening due to pent up demand while some shoppers reportedly queued up outside malls overnight to take advantage of early bird offers at some stores.

Libraries, museums and zoos were also allowed to receive visitors as the government eased coronavirus restrictions amid a pick-up in vaccination rates and due to mounting pressure from critics calling for more freedom.

The hospitality sector, however, remained shut.

In her first visit to the city since it was locked down on August 17, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the hospitality sector will reopen as soon as Auckland hits its vaccination target.

“We have maintained contact with hospitality representatives all the way through...we know how tough it’s been,” Ardern said.

“But the light is at the end of the tunnel. We will see reopenings in the very near future as Auckland starts to hit those targets,” she said.

Ardern has said the city will move into a new “traffic-light” system to manage outbreaks rather than lockdowns once 90 per cent of Aucklanders have been fully vaccinated. So far, about 84 per cent of Aucklanders have received their second doses.

Auckland schools can return to face-to-face learning from November 17, the government said.

Unvaccinated people 16 times more likely to die from Covid-19: report

Despite its success last year in eliminating Covid-19, New Zealand has struggled to fight off a highly infectious Delta variant this year, forcing Ardern to move from a strategy of zero cases through lockdowns to living with the virus.

New Zealand still has among the lowest coronavirus cases in the world with under 8,000 infections reported so far and 32 deaths.

Apart from the 1.7 million Aucklanders, and residents in some neighbouring regions, life for the rest of the population has largely returned to normal domestically although the country’s borders still remain tightly shut.