Nation declared virus-free.
New Zealand appears to have completely eradicated the coronavirus, resulting in the country moving to alert level 1 – a return to mostly normal lives.
The announcement was made on Monday after health officials confirmed that the country now has no active Covid-19 cases.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the country had ‘united in unprecedented ways to crush the virus’.
For now, the New Zealand border remains shut to all but citizens and residents, with some limited exceptions.
“The reason that New Zealanders as of tomorrow will be able to move around with freedom that very few other countries in the world have is because we are maintaining those restrictions at the border,” Ardern said in an address to the nation.
“So they will continue to be critical and that means applying a really critical analysis if and when we come to a position where we believe another country is in a similar position to us and therefore we can safely travel between.
“We haven’t put an arbitrary timeline on it because that simply comes down to a judgement that does rely on daily data and it’s simply the case that at the moment those decisions we are just not ready to make yet.”
Ardern said that when she heard there were no more active cases, she did a little dance in her living room with her 1-year-old daughter, Neve.
The World Health Organization praised the New Zealand government’s approach to the virus.
Alert level 1 will go into effect from midnight tonight.
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