Wellington, May 14 (BUS): New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has tested positive for COVID-19 but said she still plans to travel to the United States later this month for a business trip and deliver a commencement speech at Harvard University.
On Saturday, Ardern posted a photo of her positive test results on Instagram and said she was disappointed to miss several important political announcements over the next week, including the release of the government’s annual budget and plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
“I miss being there in person, but I will keep in close contact with the team and share some appreciation from here,” she wrote.
Ardern, who has been fully vaccinated, has been in isolation at her Wellington home since Sunday after her fiancé Clark Gifford tested positive for the virus. Under New Zealand’s health rules, people must isolate for seven days if a loved one tests positive.
Ardern said she returned a weak positive rapid antigen test on Friday night and then a strong positive test on Saturday morning.
It also revealed that the couple’s 3-year-old daughter Neve had tested positive for the virus on Wednesday.
“Despite my best efforts, unfortunately, I joined the rest of my family and tested positive for COVID 19,” Ardern wrote.
She said, “To anyone else, isolating or dealing with COVID, I hope you take good care of yourself!”
In her post, Ardern did not describe her symptoms, although her office said in a statement that she began experiencing symptoms on Friday.
Ardern is the latest in a long list of world leaders to contract the virus. Among the first and most serious cases was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was hospitalized for a week in April 2020 before vaccines were available.
When the pandemic began, New Zealand closed its borders and imposed strict lockdowns that enabled it to completely eradicate many outbreaks of the virus and to continue life as normal. But with the outbreak proving difficult to contain and most of the population vaccinated, the country eventually abandoned its COVID-zero policy.
This year New Zealand saw its first major outbreak as the omicron variant spread rapidly.
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