Jacinda Ardern has compared New Zealand's Covid-19 case numbers with that of the United States, after President Donald Trump was again critical of Aotearoa's resurgence that saw Auckland thrust into lockdown again.
Condemning New Zealand's Covid-19 response for a third time this week, Mr Trump said "it's over for New Zealand", labelling the Auckland community cluster a "massive outbreak".
"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," he said. "New Zealand - it's over - it's over for New Zealand, everything's gone, they're beautiful."
Ms Ardern subtly hit back at his comments at today's 1pm news conference.
"Even though we sit alongside many countries that have experienced resurgence, we have as a team done good work to limit the impact of that as much as possible," she said.
"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 of the world."
"To give you just one example, the United States has 16,563 cases per million people, we have 269 cases per million people."
Ms Ardern added that it was "not just whether you have cases, it’s how you choose to deal with them as a nation".
"Our approach to Covid has been different to other countries, but it’s an approach I think we can all feel very proud of."
On Tuesday, Mr Trump mentioned New Zealand during a speech to compare the responses of New Zealand and the US to Covid-19.
"Even New Zealand, you see what is going on in New Zealand. They beat it, they beat it. It was like front page, they beat it because they wanted to show me something. The problem is [a] big surge in New Zealand. It's terrible. We don't want that."
To that comment, Ms Ardern called Mr Trump's comments "patently wrong".
"Obviously I don't think there's any comparison between New Zealand's current cluster and the tens of thousands of cases that are being seen daily in the United States," Ms Ardern said.
"Every country is experiencing its own fight with Covid-19; it is a tricky virus, but not one where I would compare New Zealand's current status to the United States."
On Thursday, Mr Trump said that "New Zealand had a big outbreak, and other countries that were held up to try and make us look not as good as we should look, because we've done an incredible job".
The US president said during a White House press conference that Aotearoa "had a big outbreak". (Source: Other)
"But, they're having a lot of outbreaks."
New Zealand recorded 11 new cases of Covid-19 today and the US recorded 46,500.
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