Terminal COVID-19 patients are eligible for government-sanctioned assisted suicide in New Zealand, anti-euthanasia advocacy group DefendNZ reports, citing an explicit answer to an inquiry to the Ministry of Health. “Eligibility is determined on a case-by-case basis, therefore, the Ministry cannot make definitive statements about who is eligible. In some circumstances a person with COVID-19 may be eligible for assisted dying” the Ministry of Health said in the reply.
The issue is probably mostly academic as only about 13,000 Kiwis have been infected and 51 killed by the virus in a nation of 5.1 million since March 2020. For comparison’s sake, South Carolina, a state with 5.1 million people, has seen 944,574 cases and 14,550 deaths since March 2020.