Is Covid-19 Surging in New Zealand?

Yesterday, President Trump claimed that Covid-19 was “surging” in New Zealand, a country widely lauded as having successfully contained and suppressed their outbreak. That has allowed Wellington to reopen large swathes of their economy without incident.

Until this surge.

And by surge we mean something like 30 cases in 3 days. So, let’s compare that surge to the numbers of new cases in the United States.

Now, to be fair, New Zealand has a population of nearly 5 million, the United States has nearly 335 million. So a direct number-to-number comparison of the number of new cases per day isn’t fair.

So let’s look at the number of new cases per million people, which equalises the data for population.

So yeah, New Zealand is not “surging”. The data shows that even with the more limited testing per capita conducted in the United States, we are nowhere near the point of bending the curve anywhere close to zero.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Author: Brendan Barry


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