WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday slammed US President Donald Trump for saying her country was experiencing a ‘big rise’ in COVID-19, calling the remarks ‘patent wrong’.
PHILO PHOTO: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Admiralty House in Sydney, Australia, 28 February 2020. REUTERS / Loren Elliott
Trump riots in New Zealand when he told a crowd in Minnesota that the South Pacific country of 5 million people was in the grip of a “terrible” turnout in COVID-19 cases, after he had previously succeeded to eliminate the disease.
Thirteen new infections were confirmed in New Zealand on Tuesday, the total number of cases the country has taken since the pandemic began to 1,293, with 22 dead. This compares with the U.S. number of more than 5.2 million cases and 170,000 deaths.
“You see what’s going on in New Zealand?” Said Trump.
‘They hit it, they hit it, it was like front page that they hit it … because they want to see me something.
‘The problem is … big current in New Zealand, you know it’s terrible. We do not want that. ”
Ardern said there was no comparison between the handful of New Zealand day by day and the “tens of thousands” reported in the United States.
“I think anyone who follows COVID and its transmission worldwide will quite easily see that the nine cases of New Zealand in one day do not compare with the tens of thousands of the United States, and in fact do not compare with most countries in the world, ”she told reporters.
“Obviously the patent is wrong,” she said of Trump’s comments.
“We are still one of the best performing countries in the world when it comes to COVID … our workers are focused on keeping it that way.”
The death toll from New Zealand per 100,000 people, at around 0.44, is one of the lowest in the world, thanks to strict lockdowns imposed early in the pandemic. The United States has a death rate of 5.21 per 100,000, one of the highest in the world.
MYSTERY OUTBREAK
New Zealand has fared much better in the pandemic than most countries, but an abrupt resumption of COVID-19 last week in Auckland prompted the government to extend a lockdown for the city’s 1.7 million inhabitants by August 26 , while social distance rules are in place in other cities and towns.
The origin of the latest outbreak is not yet known, but authorities earlier on Tuesday ruled out the possibility that it came from frozen food rather than cargo.
“It now seems clear that the possibility is being ruled out from that investigation,” Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield told reporters.
New Zealanders are celebrating when the country went 100 days earlier this month without any transmission from the community.
With a mid-October election, Ardern is envious of voters recalling her government’s job record on fighting the virus.
“Every other country in the world has rebooted. “We went further than many, our outbreak is certainly not as significant as what we see in Vietnam, in Hong Kong, in South Korea or in Australia,” she told state broadcaster TVNZ.
Additional Report by Renju Jose in Sydney; Edited by Stephen Coates
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