New Zealand reported on Sunday a new case of the coronavirus, two weeks after a statement by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who congratulated her country on having “again defeated the virus”.
Chief Health Officer Ashley Bloomfield announced that a port worker tested positive on Saturday afternoon.
“As this person was tested the day they developed symptoms, the Department of Health was able to place contact cases in isolation,” Bloomfield said.
The announcement comes the day after the resounding Labor Party victory in Mme Arden in the general election, largely attributed to the government’s success in tackling the pandemic.
Before the vote, Mme Ardern (whose party won 64 of the 120 seats in parliament) dubbed the poll the “COVID elections”.
She mainly focused her campaign on her very strong track record in the fight against the pandemic.
New Zealand (five million people) has recorded 25 deaths from the coronavirus and the government’s strategy has been hailed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The first wave of coronavirus had probably been completely contained at the end of May, thanks to strict national containment. And the archipelago recorded, in the wake, a remarkable series of 102 days without local contamination.
But a new epidemic focus was discovered in August in the country’s largest city, prompting authorities to order a new lockdown in Auckland, a region of a million and a half inhabitants, which lasted three weeks, until ‘in early September.