New Zealand discharges last coronavirus patient from hospital and records no new cases in five days
New Zealand has discharged its last remaining coronavirus patient from hospital and has seen no new cases, a doctor leading the country's Covid-19 response said.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told reporters at the Covid-19 press briefing he believed it was the first time in months no patients with the disease were being treated at hospitals.
He said: “Currently there is nobody in hospital with Covid-19 following the discharge of a person from Middlemore Hospital (in Auckland).”
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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."
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