And New Zealand Announces Elimination of Community Spread Cases of COVID-19

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday that her country has stopped community transmission of COVID-19, effectively eliminating the virus. 

With new cases in single figures for several days, Ardern said the virus was currently eliminated. 

Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director General of Health, said the low number “does give us confidence that we’ve achieved our goal of elimination.” 

He added: “Our goal is elimination… that doesn’t mean eradication, but it means we get down to a small number of cases so that we are able to stamp out any cases and any outbreak that might come out.” 

New Zealand announced only one new case on Sunday, with four “probable cases,” and one new death.

• The news comes hours before New Zealand is set to move out of its toughest level of social restrictions, moving from “level four” to “level three” on Tuesday. 
• Businesses will be permitted to partially reopen with some restrictions, including requiring physical distancing of two meters outside of home. 
• Schools are to reopen with limited capacity, people are encouraged to work from home, and low-risk recreation activities are allowed. 
• Public venues such as libraries, museums, gyms will remain closed. 
• The measures will be reassessed in two weeks on May 11. 

New Zealand has a total of 1,469 confirmed novel coronavirus cases and 19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

New Zealand currently restricts most travelers from coming into the country, except its citizens and permanent residents.

Bloomfield and Ardern said that declaring the virus eliminated did not mean there would be no new cases, but that the numbers would be manageable with the help of aggressive contact tracing, which Ardern said had been scaled up “significantly” with the capacity to make up to 10,000 calls per day.

She praised the efforts of New Zealanders, saying: “It’s been nearly 5 weeks living and working in ways that just two months ago would have been impossible. But we did. And we have done it together.” NPR, CNN, BBC News