NEW Zealand confirmed a new community case of Covid-19 today, two weeks after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that the South Pacific nation had “beat the virus again”.

Health director-general Ashley Bloomfield said the latest case involved a port-side worker who returned a positive test yesterday afternoon.

“Because the person was tested on the day he was developing symptoms, the Health Ministry was able to self-isolate close contacts,” Bloomfield said.

He was potentially infectious as early as last Wednesday.

The announcement came a day after Ardern’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory, with her government’s handling of the pandemic widely credited as a factor.

Ahead of the vote, Ardern – whose party won 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament – had dubbed it “the Covid election”.

She campaigned on her government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the virus, which has caused just 25 deaths in a population of five million. 

New Zealand declared in May it has beaten community coronavirus transmission, although a new cluster emerged in Auckland in August forcing the country’s largest city back into lockdown for several weeks. – AFP, October 18, 2020.