New Zealand drops Covid-19 restrictions after nation declared ‘virus-free’

New Zealand has become the first country in the world with over 1,000 coronavirus cases to successfully “defeat” the virus. Watch our video about current events and then do the accompanying exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored. 

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Now that you’ve had a listen, let’s put your knowledge to the test with some of our vocabulary and comprehension exercises:

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below, as we would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

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Full Text:

“New Zealand’s government will lift all Covid-19 restrictions except stringent border controls almost immediately, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said, as the nation’s health officials declared that there were no longer any known, active cases of the coronavirus remaining.
Ardern has received praise from the World Health Organization for her government’s approach to the virus, with a cautious approach that appears to have paid off. On 25 March she locked down the country for four weeks – requiring that most New Zealanders remained at home– before gradually easing restrictions.
From midnight on Monday, Ardern said New Zealanders would live in a country “where life feels as normal as we can in the time of a global pandemic”. Physical distancing rules and limits on gathering sizes will be reduced.
New Zealand had reported just over 200 confirmed cases when the government shut down the country, and the total number of diagnosed instances of the virus never went over 1,500. Twenty-two people died of Covid-19 in New Zealand, in contrast to the tens of thousands of deaths that scientists had predicted if restrictions were not imposed.
Worldwide, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases passed 7 million on Monday, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
New Zealand is now part of a small group of countries that have declared themselves free of Covid-19, and is understood to be the first to do so among nations that have had more than 1,000 confirmed cases. For the past 10 days, a lone woman aged in her 50s, who lived in Auckland, was the last person in New Zealand known to be suffering from Covid-19. On Monday, health officials said, she had reported 48 hours symptom-free and was now considered recovered. Ardern was asked what her reaction had been to the news. She said she did a little dance to celebrate. “