New Zealand is once again experiencing community infections of the new coronavirus. However, since the outbreak on August 11, the number of cases has been kept to 15 on the busiest days and a few on the slowest days, and the number of cases has not increased dramatically. Currently, 114 positive cases have been confirmed, including 18 positive cases among those in quarantine upon entry into the country. Of these, 9 people are hospitalized and 3 are in intensive care units.
Auckland, where the cluster occurred, is currently at COVID-19 alert level 3. Movements are restricted and the city is under a city closure, with people unable to leave or travel to Auckland.
US President Trump repeatedly criticises NZ
Last week, US President Trump repeatedly warned about the outbreak of the virus in New Zealand.
Looking at New Zealand, there is a major outbreak going on right now, New Zealand is finished!
He commented.
In the United States, more than 40,000 people are testing positive every day, for a total of 5.85 million, and the death toll is approaching 200,000. Despite this, the government is ignoring its own country's problems.
The explosion of infections in New Zealand is a big problem, and we would be in trouble if the same thing were to happen in the United States. New Zealand and other countries where infections are exploding have been making us think that the situation in the United States is more serious than it actually is. We are doing very well against the virus.
He repeated these comments, which were completely inconsistent with reality.
With the US presidential election coming up in November, Trump is said to be behind in all opinion polls. He has repeatedly made irresponsible statements and taken actions regarding the new coronavirus, and seems desperate to make the public believe that the current situation in the US is not so bad.
Prime Minister Ardern calmly hits back
Following President Trump's press conference, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calmly commented that it was "clearly wrong."
Although New Zealand is one of the countries experiencing a second wave, we are working together to minimize the impact of the virus. New Zealand still has a low infection rate compared to other countries and one of the lowest death rates. To give one example, the United States has 16,563 positive cases per million people, while New Zealand has 269 cases per million people. There is no point in comparing the current clusters in New Zealand with the United States, which has hundreds of thousands of infections every day.
Prime Minister Ardern also
It's not about how many people are infected, but how we as a nation respond to the virus. Our approach to preventing the spread of infection in New Zealand is different from other countries, but it's something we can be proud of.
he added.
Ardern vs. Trump
In response to this incident, the NZ Herald has compiled a list of past interactions between Prime Minister Ardern and President Trump.
Prime Minister Ardern has been compared to President Trump since the election.
Meet New Zealand's Justin Trudeau—except she's more like Trump on immigration https://t.co/HXs3FfmrWe
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 5, 2017
The Wall Street Journal in the US praised Prime Minister Ardern.
New Zealand's Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada), but Trump's immigration policy
" I commented on Twitter, and Prime Minister Ardern immediately hit back, saying, "It's humiliating." Prime Minister Ardern's manifesto at the time of the election was completely different from Trump's policies, and now in 2020, even looking at the immigration policies that Trump has implemented, Prime Minister Ardern and Trump's policies are completely different.
Ardern first met President Trump at a summit in Vietnam. For some reason, President Trump reportedly thought that Ardern was the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. Trump commented that Ardern's election victory "shook the whole country," to which Ardern retorted, "No one demonstrated when I was elected," highlighting the large-scale anti-Trump demonstrations that took place in the U.S. when Trump became president.
Later, in an interview with the American fashion magazine Vogue, she was introduced as "New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is young, forward-thinking and clearly liberal - the polar opposite of Trump."
In 2019, during Ardern's third term as Prime Minister, she prefaced her term by saying, "We shouldn't have a say in the politics of other countries," but she criticized Trump for making discriminatory comments about lawmakers with roots in countries and cultures other than America.
The fact that Prime Minister Ardern enacted gun control laws just one month after the mosque terrorist attacks in Christchurch in March 2019 is one of the reasons why she has come to be seen as the polar opposite of her American counterpart, Donald Trump, who has not made much progress in tackling gun crime.
Both Prime Minister Ardern and President Trump are facing elections, and their election campaigns and the outcome of the elections are attracting attention.
