KAY BURLEY grilled Edward Argar on why countries such as New Zealand are two months ahead of the UK in lifting lockdown restrictions.
The Sky News host questioned why New Zealand is able to open cinemas, cafes and restaurants now while the UK has set a target of July 4 2020 to lift the same lockdown restrictions. The Health Minister stated that it is too early for international comparisons as COVID-19 has behaved differently across the world.
Kay Burley said: “Talk to me about what is going on in New Zealand.
“They are opening cinemas, cafes, restaurants, why are they doing so much better than us?
“We are not even looking at that until July 4.”
Mr Argar replied: “You are right but each country is different in terms of how the outbreak has behaved.
“New Zealand are confident they are in a position where they can manage that.
“They have had three days now without any new infections reported, we are not in that position yet.
“We have been very clear and the prime minister has been very clear that he wants to open new aspects of the economy when we can but only when it is safe to do so.
“That is why we have got the alert system and a measured approach to doing this.
“I think we have to be careful in reading too much into international comparisons.”
At the time of writing, Britain has the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world.
The UK has more than 229,000 cases in total at the time of writing.
The death toll in Britain is currently higher than 33,000 people.
Worldwide there have been more than 4,400,000 COVID-19 cases.
The death toll has reached more than 298,000.
More than 1,600,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus across the globe.
The United States has the highest amount of COVID-19 cases in the world with more than 1,400,000 confirmed cases.
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