NZ’s PM Ardern touts success in tackling pandemic in poll push

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday burnished her leadership credentials on the back of her successful response to the coronavirus pandemic at a campaign rally six days before the country’s election on October 17. Polls show Ardern’s Labour Party is expected to win the election with a wide lead over the conservative National Party, and could form government in a coalition with the Greens and New Zealand First. “While there was no playbook for COVID-19, we went hard and early and committed to a strategy of elimination which has meant that when we’ve had new cases, we’ve circled and stamped them out and opened up our economy faster than others,” Ardern told a campaign rally in the capital Wellington. “I will always maintain that it has been and will continue to be the right thing to do.” New Zealand, with 1,514 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and just 25 deaths in a population of five million, has been praised, along with South Korea and Taiwan, for its success in combating the novel coronavirus partly due to swift lockdown measures. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">