National Immunisation Schedule during Level 4: Keep on vaccinating!

National Immunisation Schedule:
Keep on vaccinating during Level 4
With New Zealand entering Level 4 lock down, we want to remind everyone about the importance of continuing with all Schedule vaccinations which are permitted to continue over this period.
This is different from COVID-19 vaccination clinics which carry greater risk for spreading COVID-19 as places where many people congregate. COVID-19 vaccinations have been paused for up to 48 hours to ensure these clinics are well prepared with public health protection measures in place to prevent any spread.
General Practices and Outreach services across the country should still be functioning during Alert Level 4 to deliver essential health services and this includes National Immunisation Schedule vaccinations. There was an unfortunate drop-off in immunisation uptake last year with the lock down and we are very keen to avoid this again.
You will of course be changing the way that you manage patient’s access to the clinic, as you have done before.
This will include:

• triaging patients prior to arrival at the clinic
• managing waiting rooms to isolate patients from each other

Maintaining our vaccination coverage against all of the other vaccine-preventable diseases remains a vital step to help protect our communities from avoidable harm, as well as reducing the risk of hospitalisation due to complications from preventable disease.

Keep up the good work everyone!
​

---