During an August 17, 2020 speech, Trump pointed to New Zealand’s surge in COVID-19 cases as an example of how other countries weren’t handling COVID-19 well.

All of a sudden a lot of the places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge, and I don’t want that, I don’t want that. But they were holding up names of countries and now they’re saying, whoops! Like even New Zealand, you see what’s 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 some. The problem is, big surge in New Zealand.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pointed out, “I don’t think there’s any comparison…we quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands.”

New Zealand, which had completely eradicated the virus, recorded 9 new cases the day prior, totaling 1,631 cases and 22 deaths. On the same day, the United States reported approximately 40,000 new cases, totaling 5,631,457 cases and 174,272 deaths. Even adjusting for population, the United States had 131 times as many deaths.

The Guardian – Trump calls out New Zealand’s ‘terrible’ Covid surge, on day it records nine new cases
Worldometer – Coronavirus