New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern hits back at Trump, saying he is 'patently wrong' to suggest her country is experiencing a 'big surge' in coronavirus cases

• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern says Donald Trump is 'patently wrong' to suggest her country is experiencing a 'big surge' in coronavirus cases.
• Trump claimed this week that New Zealand was in the midst of a 'terrible' upsurge in coronavirus cases.
• New Zealand has been widely praised for containing the coronavirus but reported a small outbreak of cases this week linked to one family.

New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said that Donald Trump is "patently wrong" to suggest her country is experiencing a "big surge" in coronavirus cases.

Trump this week claimed at a rally in Minnesota that New Zealand was experiencing a "terrible upsurge" in coronavirus cases after continuing the disease for over three months.

"You see what's going on in New Zealand?" Trump said, in comments reported by Reuters.

"They beat it, they beat it, it was like front page they beat it ... because they wanted to show me something.

"The problem is ... big surge in New Zealand, you know it's terrible. We don't want that."

Ardern said of Trump's comments: "Obviously it's patently wrong."

"I think anyone who's following COVID and its transmission globally will quite easily see that New Zealand's nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States' tens of thousands, and in fact does not compare to most countries in the world," she told reporters,in comments reported by Reuters.

New Zealand has been widely praised for its response to the pandemic, which saw the government shut down borders to tourists and enforce a strict national lockdown.

The country of around 5 million people has only recorded 22 deaths, compared to more than 170,000 in the United States.

Citizens in New Zealand celebrated earlier in August when the country experienced 102 consecutive days without any community transmission, but the record was broken after health officials recorded to an outbreak in the city of Auckland last week, with a cluster of cases linked to a single family of four.

The origin of the outbreak is unknown. Health officials have now ruled out the possibility that it came from a frozen food storage facility where one of the family members worked, according to Reuters.