BREAKING GOOD NEWS ALERT:
New Zealand has announced it no longer has any patients in hospital being treated for coronavirus.
It comes on the fifth straight day where no new cases have been reported.
This is what winning looks like.
— Goodable (@Goodable) May 27, 2020
New Zealand discharged its one remaining coronavirus patient from hospital and has seen no new cases, according to the country's leading Covid-19 response team doctor.
Reporters at their daily Covid-19 press briefing said that it was the first time in months no patients with the disease were being treated at hospitals.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said: “Currently there is nobody in hospital with Covid-19 following the discharge of a person from Middlemore Hospital (in Auckland).”
New Zealand has been widely praised for its handling of Covid-19, with just 1,154 confirmed cases and 21 deaths.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern took a hardline approach to the country’s lockdown in a bid to stop the spread of the disease. New Zealand’s first recorded case of coronavirus was on February 28, according to Ministry of Health figures.
At the height of the disease, there were 20 people in hospital with Covid-19 on April 18 but that number has slowly been decreasing. In total, 95 people in New Zealand have been hospitalised with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Dr Bloomfield said if New Zealand handled coronavirus in the same manner as the UK, the country could have had between 3,000 and 3,500 deaths.
In the UK there has been more than 37,000 recorded deaths so far.
Dr Bloomfield said: “Clearly this is a virus that's having a big impact globally… If we were the UK, we would've had between 3,000 and 3,500 deaths to date, yesterday we would've reported 250 new cases and we would still be in lockdown. That's proportionate by population."
