New Zealand will remove social distancing requirements after reporting zero active cases of Covid-19, indicating it has achieved its aim of eliminating the virus.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that all remaining restrictions on people and businesses, other than strict border controls to keep the virus out, will be lifted at midnight tonight, paving the way for a resumption of normal life. The South Pacific nation earlier reported that the last of its coronavirus patients has recovered, making it one of the few countries in the world to have successfully eradicated the pathogen and the first among those that suffered a sizable outbreak.
“We united in unprecedented ways to crush the virus,” Ardern said at a press conference in Wellington. “Our goal was to move out the other side as quickly and as safely as we could. We now have a head-start on our economic recovery.”
Rather than seeking to merely suppress transmission of the virus, New Zealand pursued an explicit elimination strategy. It enforced one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, asking everyone to stay at home and allowing only essential services to operate. While this has almost certainly triggered a deep recession, the government hopes being virus-free will allow the economy to recover more rapidly than many of its peers.
The lifting of social distancing requirements, which came sooner than expected, further boosted the nation’s top-50 stock index. It gained 3.2% Monday, becoming the first major benchmark in Asia Pacific to wipe out this year’s losses at market close.
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