US President Donald Trump says New Zealand's new outbreak of COVID-19 is a "big surge".
Speaking on Tuesday (NZ Time), Trump said New Zealand "beat [the virus]", but is now dealing with a "big surge".
"The places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge. I don't want that. I don't want that. They were holding up names of countries, and now they are saying 'whoops'.
"Even New Zealand, you see what is going on in New Zealand. They beat it, they beat it. It was like front page, they beat it because they wanted to show me something. The problem is [a] big surge in New Zealand. It's terrible. We don't want that."
New Zealand has 58 active cases of COVID-19 in the community. On Monday, it recorded nine new cases. On Sunday, the United States recorded 42,000 new cases. Overall, New Zealand has reported 1280 cases of the virus, compared to nearly 5.6 million in the US.
Prior to the outbreak in Auckland last week, officials - including the Director-General of Health - had been warning that another lot of cases was a matter of when, not if. All of the new active cases in the community are believed to be connected to the same cluster.
In order to stop the virus spreading, Auckland was put into lockdown on Wednesday, while the rest of the country went into alert level 2. This has minimised movement into and out of the Super City region.
