In a sensational development coming from New Zealand, the country has zero COVID-19 patients in the hospital and has not registered a new case for 6 days, the health ministry confirmed in a statement.
It has been learnt that the last hospital patient was discharged in Auckland overnight in the latest mark of win for New Zealand’s internationally-praised reply to the pandemic.
New Zealand confirmed its first case on February 26 but took immediate steps and measures by shutting its borders by March 19 and started implementing a complete nationwide lockdown on March 26.
New Zealand’s success means the nationwide lockdown could be practically lifted within weeks with gatherings of up to 100 already allowed and plans being made to resume travel to Australia.
The official tally of 1,504 infections hasn’t moved since last Friday, while the death toll of 21 has not grown since May 6.
The Oceania country conducted a total of 267,435 COVID tests and contact tracers are running to monitor the remaining cases through the NZ COVID Tracer app.
New Zealand has successfully managed the deadly outbreak much better than most other nations of the world. However, the officials are taking their time to drop the alert level from two to one, which is the least severe level.
In late April, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern added claimed that country had comprehensively won a massive battle over the spread of coronavirus epidemic. She gave an official announcement when New Zealand started to exit from its nationwide lockdown.
Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern who is serving as the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand since 26 October 2017 confirmed in a statement that there is no longer any undetected community transmission of the coronavirus epidemic.
Ardern said that the nation must hunt down the remaining cases of the virus. “There is no widespread, undetected community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle,” said Ardern. “But we must remain vigilant if we are to keep it that way.”
Now, here comes a big question as to how did they manage to do it? The national lockdown was put into action at an early stage itself.
Contingency plans were also put in place so that there were no lack of resources when an emergency situation came.
Confirmed cases were put in quarantine so fast so that the spreading was put in check. This also ensured that the authorities were in complete control of the situation.