Donald Trump has doubled down on his claims New Zealand is experiencing a large resurgence of Covid-19.
The US President, whose administration has been battling the highest recorded coronavirus case numbers in the world, made the comments during a White House media conference today.
"New Zealand, by the way, had a big outbreak, and other countries that were held up to try and make us look not as good as we should look, and we've done an incredible job.
"They're having a lot of outbreaks, but they'll be able to put them out, and we'll be able put them out."
It comes after Trump made similar claims earlier this week when addressing a crowd in Mankato, Minnesota.
"You see what's going on in New Zealand?" Trump said.
"They beat it they beat, it was like front page [news] they beat it because they wanted to show me something."
"The problem is [there is a] big surge in New Zealand, you know it's terrible - we don't want that.
"This is an invisible enemy, that should have never been let to come to this country, to Europe to the rest of the world by China, just remember it," he said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hit back at Trump Tuesday, saying his claims were "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," Ardern said today.
"Obviously, 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."
Ardern said anyone who was following outbreaks around the world would "quite easily see" New Zealand's nine new cases yesterday didn't compare to the tens of thousands in the United States.
On Monday New Zealand reported nine new cases while the United States had 42,000.
"Obviously it's patently wrong," she said when asked about Trump's comments.
"We are still one of the best-performing countries in the world when it comes to Covid and our workers are focused on keeping it that way."
New Zealand now has 96 active cases of Covid-19 after a resurgence of infections in the community last week, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1,649.
The US has recorded more than 5,520,000 Covid cases and more than 170,000 people have died from the virus.
Related Stories
Comments
Where the hell is that guy from the grassy knoll these days .... Donny Trumpet needs his Kevlar toupee parted !!
He obviously hasn't got a clue about what's going on in his own country, otherwise he'd be putting every effort into getting his own house in order before critisized a country that lead the world in containing the virus.
There's a lot of people now critisizing the way testing is / has been done at the boarder, including sporting bodies trying to put greater emphisis on missing international competition, over the number of people dying of the virus.
It really doesn't matter whether there were mistakes made regarding testing at the boarder, what's needed now is for everyone to stop throwing insults at eachother and ALL focus on finding a solution to stop NZ turning out like Melbourne or the US.
I don't believe this virus is going to magically disappear, so I'd be getting ready for a future full lockdown of NZ once again, because there's too many boofheads out there that don't give a rats backside about anyone but themselves.
The 'tolerant' left strikes again.... Anyone you disagree with is the enemy, right?!
Let's be honest. The main reason New Zealand has done so well at beating this virus is because of our small size and geographic location. The Prime Minister's decision to shut down our border and economy has been a perfect solution to destroying the virus here, but it has also greatly damaged our economy.
America can't shut down their economy without dire consequences for the world economy. I also can't imagine the average American citizen staying indoors for months on end, just because the President tells them to. America isn't known as the 'Land of the Free' for nothing.
Did we really beat the virus first time round just to show Trump? Here I was thinking we beat it so we could protect the people of Aotearoa, our health system, try to recover our economy and get us back to some semblance of normal life. But hey, what do I know?