As of Sunday, New Zealand, the small island country which has a small population of just under 5 million — has a total of 1,569 confirmed cases and 22 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health on this achievement, said on Sunday, “Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone, however, as we all know, we can’t afford to be complacent”.
Bloomfield further added, “We have seen overseas how quickly the virus can re-emerge and spread in places where it was previously under control, and we need to be prepared to quickly stamp out any future cases in New Zealand.” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has been praised for her leadership amid this testing times of COVID-19 pandemic, called her re-election campaign, which she kicked off on Saturday, a “COVID election.” While on the other hand, it seems as if US President is quite ardent to postpone the elections further that’s supposed to be held on 3rd November. Saying that it wouldn’t be very fair of an election considering the current COVID-19 scenario in the nation.
So what exactly Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did that resulted to no cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand for straight 100 days! Well, as the virus started to spread globally, on 2 February, a man in the Philippines became the first person outside China to die of Covid-19.
At this point, there were no reported cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand, but the next day, the country began banning entry to any foreigner coming from or via China. Any New Zealander returning from China also had to through isolation for 14 days.
Also, a flight ban was also extended to Iran – the origin of New Zealand’s first case – and restrictions placed on anyone arriving from South Korea, Northern Italy, or anybody and everybody, who were showing symptoms.
And as of midnight on 16 March, everybody including New Zealanders, had to go into self-isolation on arrival in the country, unless they were coming from the largely unaffected Pacific island nations.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said these were the strictest regulations that could have been implemented to keep the COVID-19 cases in check in the world, for which she would “make no apologies”.
On March 23, New Zealand had just over 100 cases of COVID-19, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 40, decided it was time to take action, and put the entire country into one of the most restrictive lockdowns. Everyone, except for essential workers, was required to stay home for four weeks, only leaving for groceries or solo exercising, though swimming at the beach is prohibited. The country borders were also prohibited and shut off to any international travel.
By late April, the country claimed it had “eliminated”
the virus after reporting a significantly low number of confirmed COVID-19 cases
in the country.
Experts have also agreed that New Zealand’s strategy against COVID-19 may have worked better than other countries who tried to slow the spread and “flatten the curve” instead. While New Zealand is celebrating success against COVID-19, the U.S. is leading the world in COVID-19 cases. Currently, the United States surpassed 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Sunday with at least 162,441 deaths in the country, according to Johns Hopkins, followed by India in third place.Last week, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, whose models are included in the CDC’s weekly list of national forecasts, predicted that by December 2020, the death toll in the United States could reach 295,011. However, the total amount of deaths could be much higher or lower depending on how many states and individuals can continue working to prevent the spread of the virus.
