Jacinda Ardern slaps down Trump’s claim New Zealand is seeing ‘big virus surge’

Ardern said there is 'no comparison' between New Zealand’s nine cases in one day and America's 40,000 to 50,000 new infections every 24 hours.

Jacinda Ardern has slapped down Donald Trump’s ‘patently wrong’ claim that New Zealand is seeing a ‘big surge’ in coronavirus cases.

The US president described a small outbreak in New Zealand as ‘terrible’ on Tuesday – despite the US having the worst death toll of any country in the world.

Prime Minister Ardern hit back later that day, saying there was ‘no comparison’ between New Zealand’s nine cases in one day and America’s 40,000 to 50,000 new infections every 24 hours.

Speaking to a crowd in Minnesota on Tuesday, Trump said: ‘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. The problem is, big surge in New Zealand. So, you know, it’s terrible, we don’t want that.’

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Ardern told reporters: ‘Obviously every country is experiencing its own fight with Covid-19, it is a tricky virus but not one where we would compare New Zealand’s current status to the US. Obviously, it’s patently wrong,’

She later added: ‘I think anyone who’s following Covid and its transmission globally will quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands, and in fact does not compare to most countries in the world.’

New Zealand had gone 102 days without any Covid-19 cases – but new restrictions were recently imposed and the general election postponed after a small outbreak in Auckland.

Nine new infections were confirmed on Monday, while thirteen new infections were reported on Tuesday, taking the country’s total number of cases since the pandemic began to 1,293, with 22 deaths.

Only 69 cases have been confirmed in the new outbreak, with New Zealand’s government describing it as contained and manageable.

Meanwhile, the US has seen 5.2 million cases overall, with 170,000 people losing their lives to the pandemic under Trump’s leadership.

It comes after the former businessman attempted to claim the US is ‘lower than the world’ for Covid-19 cases in a car crash interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.

Furiously shuffling papers, the Republican said his country is ‘lowest in numerous categories’, before being informed he was discussing death as a proportion of population, not death as a proportion of cases.

It’s not the first time Trump and Ardern have clashed, with the president joking she had ’caused a lot of upset in her country’ when she was elected in 2017.

Referring to the mass protests that followed the Republican’s election in 2016, she responded saying: ‘You know, no one marched when I was elected’.

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