New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Trump's account is "obviously wrong"
Photo: Guo Lei / imago images / XinhuaNew Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has rejected US President Donald Trump's claim that her country is currently experiencing a "huge" second corona wave. Trump's presentation was "obviously wrong," said Ardern. Anyone who follows the situation will "realize that the nine cases a day in New Zealand are not comparable to the tens of thousands in the US".
New Zealand quickly got the spread of the novel coronavirus under control and was therefore considered a role model in the fight against the pandemic worldwide. As early as March - less than a month after the virus was introduced into the country - the government responded with a lockdown of the maximum level four.
After more than a hundred days without a single new infection, however, a new focus of infection was discovered in Auckland last week, whereupon the authorities again imposed a curfew in the city.
General election postponed
Most recently, the parliamentary elections were postponed by four weeks to October 17th. The election was originally scheduled to take place on September 19th.
Trump then spoke of a "huge wave" in New Zealand at an election rally in Minnesota on Monday. "It's terrible. We don't want that," said the US President, who also implied that Ardern's crisis management at the beginning of the pandemic was directed against him personally. "They fought it. It was in the headlines. They fought it because they wanted to show me."
In fact, the number of cases in New Zealand and the USA are disproportionate: While New Zealand, with its five million inhabitants, has registered around 1300 corona infections since the beginning of the pandemic and there are currently around 70 active cases in the country, the USA has more than five in total Millions of proven infections and 170,000 deaths, the country in the world hardest hit by the corona crisis.
Icon: The mirrormfh / AFP
