New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a sharp comparison between the situation of New Zealand’s coronavirus and the epidemic in the United States today, two days after US President Donald Trump said the island nation had a “major outbreak” “.
There were 11 new coronavirus cases reported in New Zealand on Friday, Ardern said, adding that the country has “one of the lowest causes of death” from the virus, especially compared to the US.
“New Zealand is among a small number of countries that still have a low rate of Covid cases, and one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world,” Ardern said at a news conference.
“To give you just one example, the United States has 16,563 cases per million, we have 269 per million people.”
New Zealand is currently struggling with a recurrence of cases that came shortly after the country went more than 100 days without local broadcasts.
Ardern’s comparison comes after Trump made remarks scattering New Zealand at a White House news conference on Wednesday.
“New Zealand, by the way, had a big outbreak,” Trump said. “And other countries that were kept trying to make us not as good as we should look – because we did an incredible job – but they broke out a lot.”
Trace of an outbreak: Of the 11 new cases reported on Friday, nine were transferred locally and two were imported from abroad, said New Zealand’s Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
He added that five of the local cases are linked to churches in South Auckland, and four are related to domestic contacts from previous cases. The new infections bring the total number of recorded cases from New Zealand to 1,315.
As of Friday, 88 of 89 active community cases have been recovered to a cluster identified in Auckland last week, while one case remains under investigation, Bloomfield said.
“We may not find all the answers for this cluster,” warned Ardern, adding that the origins of the outbreak were still being investigated by health officials.
Some 15,714 coronavirus tests were conducted on Thursday, bringing the total number of tests taken in the country to 673,220, Bloomfield said.
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