New Zealand against COVID-19

Let's briefly have a look at the 5 reasons why New Zealand managed to beat the novel coronavirus.

1. Remote Location

New Zealand is located in the south-eastern corner of the Pacific ocean, a world away from almost
everyone.

It is surrounded by water on all sides, so it becomes considerably easier to control who comes in and who goes out from the island.

2. Proactive Governance

A lot of countries in the world relied upon reactive strategies i.e. doing something as a response to the problem once it has already occurred.
But New Zealand played it differently. They announced a strict and early lockdown when the number of cases was just at 100, rather than waiting for the epidemic to blow up.
They implemented strategies like contact tracing & 14 days quarantine for returning travelers very effectively.
They conducted 3 lakh tests, which is about 6% of the entire population.

And that brings us to the reason number 3

3. Population

New Zealand has been inhabited by about 5 million people with a population density of 15 per square
Km.
Comparing that to Mumbai you can see that Mumbai is about 2000 times as densely populated as New Zealand.
Owing to their low population density, following the norms of social distancing becomes relatively easier.

4. Public Healthcare

New Zealand has a good functional public health system, which provides basic health services to
every citizen.
Also, the existing health records were used to identify those who are at risk of contracting the virus and developing the disease.

5. Politicians leading by example

PM Jacinda Ardern has been extremely successful in communicating with the masses through the use of social media. She passed on the message loud and clear to the people.
A testament to this comes from an incident wherein the PM herself was denied entry into a cafe, as it was already running at its maximum capacity allowed during the partial lockdown.
Also, the PM, along with a number of high-level officials took a 20% pay cut in an effort to prevent the destabilization of the economy.

All these measures along with full cooperation of the people enabled New Zealand to halt the coronavirus at 1504 cases and 22 deaths.

New Zealand has now been COVID-19-free on the 8th of June.

It does not mean that the virus won't return to the nation, but when it does we know that New Zealand will be well prepared to deal with it in its full strength.