Although PM Jacinda Ardern said alert level 3 had played a critical role in finding the outbreak's perimeter Cabinet will reconsider any shift down levels on Monday. Video / Pool
A war of words has broken out as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today trumpeted New Zealand's Covid outbreak response, pointedly comparing the country's low cases against skyrocketing US figures.
Embattled US President Donald Trump earlier took aim at New Zealand over our recent resurgence of coronavirus, describing yesterday's five newcases as a "massive breakout" even as US cases continue to grow by tens of thousand every day.
Speaking to a crowd in Pennsylvania, Trump said: "You look at our mortality rates, you look at all the things, but they like to compare us to others, so they were talking about New Zealand.
"New Zealand, New Zealand, it's over for New Zealand, everything's gone, it's all over - they're beautiful," Trump said.
But during today's Covid update press conference, Ardern praised the country for achieving a promising result just over a week into the Auckland level 3 lockdown and used a direct comparison with America to press home how well things were going Down Under.
"There are encouraging signs we have the Auckland cluster circled," she said.
All 87 cases in the latest outbreak were isolated and there had been 170,515 tests since last Wednesday when the Auckland region went into lockdown.
"To put this into perspective, globally the World Health Organisation this week said we have one of the highest rankings in the world for our rate of testing per positive case.
"This means we can have a high level of confidence around the reach of this cluster into the community and that we are containing it."
"Even though we sit alongside many countries that have experienced resurgence, we as a team have done good work to limit the impact of that as much as possible.
"New Zealand is among a small number of countries that still has a low rate of Covid cases and one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world.
"To give you just one example, the United States has 16,563 cases per million people. We have 269 cases per million."
Asked about Trump's comments about New Zealand's Covid cases, Ardern said anyone could see the different Covid numbers between the US and New Zealand.
The US death toll from Covid-19 is rapidly approaching 175,000 while New Zealand's stands at 22.
On the day New Zealand registered five new cases, the US recorded 46,500, according to the Centre for Disease Control.
