New Zealand has reportedly stopped the spread of COVID-19, meaning the virus is effectively eliminated within the country
With new cases being in just single figures for multiple days, including just one case of the coronavirus on Sunday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the virus was “currently” eliminated in New Zealand.
New Zealand has reported a total of 1,469 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and just 19 deaths from the coronavirus in the country.
This news comes after the Prime Minister of New Zealand has announced that herself as well as other ministers will be taking a pay cut while the country deals with the coronavirus pandemic.
The majority of residents in the country will still be required to stay at home and adhere to the current lockdown and social distancing measures that are in place in the nation.
As of Tuesday, some non-essential business, healthcare and education activity will be resuming as normal in the country.
“We are opening up the economy, but we’re not opening up people’s social lives,” Ms Ardern said at the daily government briefing.
Credit: by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
At the news conference in Auckland, Ardern said:
“There is no widespread community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle.”
The country implemented some of the toughest lockdown measures in the world, putting restrictions on travel and other activities early on in the pandemic, when just few dozen cases were reported in the country.
New Zealand closed its borders, started enforcing quarantine of all those who were entering the country, brought in strict lockdown measures and implemented an extensive testing and contact tracing programme.
Beaches, waterfronts and playgrounds were shut on the 26th of March, as were schools and offices. Bars and restaurants were also closed, even for takeaway and delivery services.
Prime Minister Ardern said that modelling indicated New Zealand could have had over 1,000 cases a day if her government had not put in place the lockdown measures so early.
She said her country could never know how bad it would have been if these steps were not taken, but that “through our cumulative actions we have avoided the worst”.
New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, said that the country’s low number of new cases in recent days:
“does give us confidence that we have achieved our goal of elimination”.
He warned that “elimination” did not mean that no new cases will be reported in the country, “but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from”.
Now that COVID-19 is now effectively eliminated in the country, officials in New Zealand are warning against complacency, saying that this triumph does not mean that there will be no new coronavirus cases in weeks to come.
New Zealand has now moved down from a Level Four lockdown phase, to a Level Three phase. This means that most businesses will now be able to reopen, including restaurants for takeaways and delivery, but will provide no services that those involve face-to-face contact.
