New Zealand Has Been COVID-19 Free for 100 Days-Here’s How They Did It

100 days without recording any domestic transmission of coronavirus

 

This Sunday, New Zealand achieved the milestone of being COVID-19 free for 100 days. The country has marked 100 days without community transmission of the deadly disease. This progress is appreciable given the fact that the first known case was imported to the country on February 26, and the last case of community transmission was on May 1. So, the elimination of the virus just took 65 days.

 

New Zealand’s progress is appreciable, and all the countries, including Australia, can learn from it. Here are some of the strategies that proved effective for the country.

• New Zealand didn’t let the virus enter through the border by opting for ongoing border controls.
• Community transmission was stopped by choosing options like a strict lockdown and physical distancing.
• It adopted case-based controls by using testing, contact tracing and quarantine options.

These measures apparently worked as the country has low case numbers and deaths as compared to North America and European nations.

 

In addition to New Zealand, some other countries that have succeeded in containment and elimination of the virus and haven’t reported new outbreaks are Taiwan, Fiji and Mongolia. Many countries like Hong Kong, Mainland China, South Korea, Vietnam and Australia have reported new outbreaks recently.

 

Victoria and New South Wales are now seeing a resurgence in Australia. Two key reasons why New Zealand had better success than us are the early commitment to a clearly articulated elimination strategy (and its aggressive elimination) and an intense lockdown.

As the number of cases is still rising in Australia, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced that Australians won’t be able to visit New Zealand till the end of 2020. She said “It’s clear to us that opening up with Realm countries, keeping in mind they are New Zealand passport holders, will come before any opening up with Australia. [Officials are] doing that. They’re working with the airlines. That’s going to take several weeks. Then we’ll get a report back on exact dates when we’ll be able to start the rollout of the reopening.”

 

It seems that we can learn a lot from New Zealand, especially when it comes to wearing a face mask, strictly implementing lockdown and not being careless if we want to control the second wave of coronavirus we are facing.