Sarah Meadowcroft, a teacher at the Kaipara Flats School in New Zealand's Auckland Region, prepares for the return of a small number of students on April 28. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

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The world is watching New Zealand.

Decisive early action, along with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic style of leadership, quashed the country’s coronavirus outbreak in fewer than 50 days, earning it a place on the short list of nations the rest of the world is looking to for guidance — not just on how to fight the initial wave of the pandemic, but on what could come next.