Covid 19 coronavirus: Reporter confuses Ardern and Bloomfield

Jacinda Ardern has deftly dealt with another media mixup. Photo / Supplied

Another hard-working reporter has slipped up during the daily coronavirus briefings, this time managing to get Jacinda Ardern and Dr Ashley Bloomfield mixed up before forgetting his question, in a hilarious exchange caught on video.

Australia's Jackson Williams, reporting for Sky News, made the awkward gaffe while attempting to ask the Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield a question on the low number of cases that New Zealand is now recording.

Unfortunately Williams directed his question at Ardern, who smiled kindly and pointed to her left.

It's not quite as bad as calling your teacher "mum" but it was enough to see Williams forget his question.

"Now I've lost my question," he admitted before a weary fellow traveller offered a word of support.

The Herald's Jason Walls, who suffered his own embarrassing slip-up recently when the PM asked if he was getting enough sleep when he forgot a question while multi-tasking during the press conference, chimed in with "been there".

The PM's response to Walls' earlier moment of forgetfulness received global attention after a clip of the exchange was tweeted out by a foreign journo.

Ardern won praise for her handling of the moment, with Americans piping up to say that she should replace US President Donald Trump and that the video was proof it was "time to move to New Zealand".

Jason Walls might be living with that moment for a while if social media's response is anything to go by, with a Labour-supporting Twitter account reposting the video of Jackson Williams' mistake with a caption that identified Walls as "Journo who always forgets his question".

I tried to offer my support to Jackson by yelling 'been there'.

This is how they captioned me. Fair play. pic.twitter.com/6bPoq1aeJt

— Jason Walls (@Jasonwalls92) April 22, 2020

Jason, we're with you brother.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website