New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is hitting back after President Trump characterized an outbreak of new coronavirus cases in the country as a “big surge.”
On Monday, New Zealand tallied nine new COVID-19 cases. Trump, speaking in Mankato, Minnesota, highlighted the cases, which came after the country went more than 100 days without a single new case of the virus. There are now at least 90 active cases in total, according to NPR, and the new infections prompted the government to move its election back a month.
“The places that they were using to hold up, they’re having a big surge. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that. But they were holding up names of countries, and now they’re saying, ‘Whoops!’” Trump told supporters.
“In fact, even New Zealand, do you see what’s going on in New Zealand? They beat it, they beat it, it was like front page, ‘They beat it,’ because they wanted to show me something,” he continued. “The problem is, big surge in New Zealand. So, you know, it’s terrible.”
Ardern called those remarks “patently wrong” when asked about them by reporters on Tuesday.
“I don’t think there’s any comparison between New Zealand’s current cluster and the tens of thousands of cases that are being seen daily in the United States,” she said. “Obviously, every country is experiencing its own fight with COVID-19. It is a tricky virus, but not one where I would compare New Zealand’s current status to the United States.”
“We are still one of the best-performing countries in the world when it comes to COVID,” Ardern said.
New Zealand has recorded more than 1,600 cases and 22 deaths since the pandemic began in central China late last year. The U.S. has tallied some 5.4 million infections and more than 171,000 deaths, according to the most recent tally by Johns Hopkins University.
