While the USA has reached 1 million Coronavirus cases amidst political ignorance and brazen buffoonery of companies asking to lift the lockdown, there is good news from the other side of the world.
New Zealand has finally achieved the goal of eliminating the Coronavirus from the nation. But they are not celebrating, neither are they going to lift the lockdown any time soon.
Compare this with USA where the number of cases has reached beyond 1 million but American companies are already pushing for removing the lockdown.
On Monday, New Zealand reported just one new case
New Zealand’s Director General of Heatlh was ecstatic about it:
“That does give us confidence that we’ve achieved our goal of elimination, which never meant zero but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from.”
New Zealand’s first secret weapon against Coronavirus
They had reacted really fast. Perhaps only Vietnam was much faster when they imposed travel restrictions and started preparing medical facilities even when most of the world was not aware of the Virus.
They put travel restrictions on March 14th, when they had only 6 cases in the country.
They banned foreign travellers on March 19th, when they had just 28 cases.
They went into lockdown on March 23rd, when their total number of cases was just 102 and they had no deaths.
Here’s how New Zealand is lifting the lockdown
Their lockdown was supposed to last five weeks and it just ended on Monday, and now the country is slowly relaxing the lockdown. 75% of the economy is back into functioning but a very few number of people have started going to work.
Those who can work from home, have continued to work from home.
With the new guidelines in effect, people are also allowed to hold funerals and order food.
Remarkable Coronavirus data from New Zealand
New Zealand has reported only 1,472 cases and just 19 deaths – and nearly 82% of the people have recovered. Although New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern is still cautious:
“We are not out of the woods. (Level three) is a recovery room of sorts to assess if the incredible work that New Zealanders have done … has worked.”
Another surprising data is that while Coronavirus is spreading from one person to an average of 2.5 people, the spreading rate in New Zealand is just 0.4.
Good science, caring leadership
Things that worked for New Zealand were that they took action really fast, they educated the citizens with the best information, and the government really cared about the people – they tried to save lives rather than bat for corporate profit.
New Zealand citizens also responded positively, supported the government in upholding the lockdown and stayed home. 87% of the people have supported the actions taken by their government.
“In New Zealand, it has been a wonderful link between good science, and brilliant leadership, and the two together are I think are really highly effective.”
On the other hand, Americans have begun to protest against the lockdown while corporate lobby pressurizes the authorities to lift the lockdown.
New Zealand’s economy is in danger
Although, New Zealand’s prime source of revenue is tourism and that will take a long time to be restored. Meanwhile it is predicted that people will get unemployed, and that economy might take a tumble.
But that does not worry the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, she is hopeful and she has a plan to get her country back on track:
“Under a best case scenario, New Zealand’s Treasury estimated that the country could see a 13% unemployment rate. We will do all we can to ensure we fight the economic impacts of the virus in the same way we did the health threat. With unity, with fast support, by looking after each other.”
Featured Image Courtesy: CNBC
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