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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that she had rejected her health minister's offer to resign for breaching nationwide lockdown rules as doing so would jeopardise plans to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, Reuters reported.
Health minister David Clark drove his family to the beach in the early stages of the lockdown, flouting social distancing rules, the prime minister said.
“Under normal conditions I would sack the minister of health. What he did was wrong, and there are no excuses,” Ardern said.
Instead, Ardern has demoted Clark to the bottom of cabinet rankings and stripped him of his role as associate finance minister.
