New Zealand has had no new COVID-19 cases for the 5th consecutive day.
New Zealand has discharged its last coronavirus patient from the hospital and has seen no new cases, a doctor leading the country’s COVID-19 response said.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told reporters at the COVID-19 press briefing he believed it was the first time in months that no patients were being treated at hospitals.
No new coronavirus cases.
The country, as reported by Fox News, also marked the fifth consecutive day with no new coronavirus cases confirmed in the country.
Bloomfield said:
Currently there is nobody in the hospital with COVID-19 following the discharge of a person from Middlemore Hospital (in Auckland).
New Zealand has been widely praised for its handling of COVID-19, with just 1,154 confirmed cases and 21 deaths.
The news comes a month after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern claimed the nation had won the battle against the virus with the number of new cases falling into the single digits in days.
Ardern had taken a hard-line approach to the country’s lockdown in a bid to stop the spread of the disease.
She attributed that success to a strict early lockdown and people’s ongoing vigilance.
New Zealand has won the battle.
The news comes one month after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern claimed the nation had won the battle against the virus.
She said:
Cases continue to grow overseas, and we still do have people coming home. But for the most part, many aspects of life can and should feel much more normal.
She said New Zealand will continue to observe its current Level 2 lockdown rules until at least June 22, 2020.
The country will ease restrictions.
While Ardern had refused to drastically lift lockdown rules, the country is planning to ease restrictions by increasing the maximum size of gatherings from 10 people to 100.
New Zealand’s first recorded case of coronavirus was on February 28, 2020, according to Ministry of Health figures.
Number has been decreasing.
At the height of the disease, there were 20 people in hospital with COVID-19 on April 18, 2020, but that number has slowly been decreasing.
In total, 95 people in New Zealand have been hospitalised with the disease caused by coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.
The country has handled the virus very differently.
Bloomfield said if New Zealand handled coronavirus in the same manner as the United Kingdom (UK), the country could have had between 3,000 and 3,500 deaths.
He said:
Clearly this is a virus that is having a big impact globally. If we were the UK, we would have had between 3,000 and 3,500 deaths to date. Yesterday we would have reported 250 new cases and we would still be in lockdown. That is proportionate by population.
(H/T Tuko)