WION Web Team
September 9, 2021
-WION
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is famous for keeping her calm and a smiling face, even during the toughest situations. However, a silly question about a patient and a visitor having sex in hospital made it difficult for Ardern to not react strongly.
Ardern and the director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were giving daily Covid briefing recently. A reporter, however, asked whether a patient and a visitor having “sexual relations” in hospital would be considered a “high-risk activity, in the current climate”.
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This question left the usually cool leader confused and shocked. While Bloomfield said, “I think it is a high-risk activity, potentially, however I don’t know any of the details about that interaction,” Ardern quickly added that “regardless of the Covid status, that kind of thing shouldn’t generally be part of visiting hours, I would have thought.”
The question was raised as apparently the Auckland district health board has been accused of allowing hundreds of visitors to see the Covid patients on a daily basis, and some of them might even have gotten involved in sexual relationships.
While the allegation has not been proved right yet, this has come at a time when New Zealand is fighting a huge Covid outbreak due to the Delta variant. Several areas of the country are still under strict lockdown in a bid to control the spread of the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, Spain has helped New Zealand with more than 250,000 extra doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, Ardern confirmed. The shipment department from Madrid at 1am (NZT) and will reach New Zealand by the next morning.
Ardern has urged the eligible population to get vaccinated against Covid as soon as possible so that children who are not eligible for vaccine can be saved from community spread. “If everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated, you are potentially saving the life of someone who can’t be,” she said. This request came as she announced that nearly 120 cases are children under the age of nine.
