In mid-March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold in Europe and the United States, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presented her country with a choice.
They could let coronavirus creep into the community and brace for an onslaught, as other countries around the world had done. Or they could"go hard" by closing the border — even if that initially hurt the island nation's hugely tourism-dependant economy.
Somehow, authorities said, the virus appeared to have crept in through the border. As of Thursday, New Zealand has 101 active cases, bringing the country's total reported coronavirus cases to 1,304, including 22 deaths. Elimination — which the New Zealand health authorities defined as stopping the chains of transmission in the country — was an ambitious goal, and one that few nations adopted.
"I don't think it's scaremongering asking ask people to prepare for potential natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and so on - it's actually looking after people," he said on a Facebook Live Q&A session."This is about being prepared." But even if the authorities hadn't made errors, it's possible to imagine a scenario where an infectious person could slip through the cracks. We know that false negative tests happen, so there's a very small chance a person could be Covid-19 positive and still be infectious when they are let out into the community after 14 days.
On Thursday, Judith Collins, the leader of the main right-wing opposition National Party, launched its own proposed border policy, saying that the government's"disorderly and confused response" had put the health and livelihoods of 5 million New Zealanders at risk."Our attempt to eliminate Covid is an obsession that will destroy us," wrote columnist Damien Grant on the country's biggest news website, Stuff.co.nz.
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