New Zealand Beat the Coronavirus – and Has Three Lessons for Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, April 27th, that the country has not recorded any more cases of local coronavirus contagion, a key step towards relaxing isolation. “We have won this battle,” she said, after five weeks of restrictions.

The country has so far recorded 1,122 cases of the novel coronavirus, with 19 deaths. Only one new case has been detected in the past 24 hours. Brazil has recorded over 3,000 new cases in the last 24 hours alone, and the death toll is now over 4,000. New Zealand is a rich country with only five million inhabitants. But its success in fighting the coronavirus, and its recovery process, provides lessons to Brazil.

The first is the federal government’s commitment (simpler, of course, in a much smaller country than Brazil). Jacinda Ardern and her Ministers reduced salaries by 20 percent for six months. Since March 25th, the country has closed its borders, banned crowds, closed schools and stores.

The 1,600 homeless were moved to hotels and motels, and should then be transferred to government shelters, where they can be screened, at a cost of 100 million dollars. “It was almost five weeks living and working in ways that two months ago would have seemed impossible. But we did it, and we did it together,” the President said on Monday, according to Business Insider.

Jacinda Ardern is a center-left progressive but her Australian colleague, Christian Conservative Scott Morrison, has also been achieving good results. Which made them examples in a recent report in the American newspaper The New York Times. They both have a routine of explanatory speeches to the population – in Arden’s case, on Facebook live broadcasts.

The second lesson is that clarity in numbers is critical for an opening. New Zealand only announced measures to ease quarantine after it had recovered almost all of the 1,122 patients. On Monday, Ashley Bloomfield, the country’s health director, said there was only one new case that day, plus four likely cases, all of which were traceable. There are another 347 citizens waiting for their test results.

The number of cases in the country is as high as it was on April 9th, when it reached 929, and is now at 309. That is, from the start of the decline it took 18 days until the announcement of the first quarantine relief measures. Any new case in the country, according to the authorities, can now be promptly traced. Taiwan was the model that managed to control the spread of the virus through mass testing.

The third lesson was enhanced by Arden on Monday – the economy will restart, but care will continue. Some businesses, food delivery establishments, and schools have been allowed to reopen their doors. Businesses deemed non-essential will be allowed to reopen with no personal contact with customers.

“We are reopening the economy, but not people’s social lives,” Ardern said. The government continues to urge people to remain at home when they are not working or at school. New relaxation measures, if all goes according to plan, should be announced on May 11th. That is when São Paulo, the state with the most cases in Brazil, should be starting to lessen quarantine – good lessons for this time can be found 12,000 kilometers away.

Source: Exame

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