New Zealand isn't just flattening the curve. It's squashing it. [View all]

[demmiblue]

HAVELOCK NORTH, New Zealand — It’s been less than two weeks since New Zealand imposed a coronavirus lockdown so strict that swimming at the beach and hunting in bushland were banned. They’re not essential activities, plus we’ve been told not to do anything that could divert emergency services’ resources.

People have been walking and biking strictly in their neighborhoods, lining up six feet apart while waiting to go one-in-one-out into grocery stores, and joining swaths of the world in discovering the vagaries of home schooling.

It took only 10 days for signs that the approach here — “elimination” rather than the “containment” goal of the United States and other Western countries — is working.

The number of new cases has fallen for two consecutive days, despite a huge increase in testing, with 54 confirmed or probable cases reported Tuesday. That means the number of people who have recovered, 65, exceeds the number of daily infections.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-zealand-isnt-just-flattening-the-curve-its-squashing-it/2020/04/07/6cab3a4a-7822-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html