Vaccine update from the Director-General of Health

As you will have seen, this morning the Prime Minister announced that our first delivery of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is expected to arrive in New Zealand early next week. This is earlier than we’d originally expected and great news for all New Zealanders.  

This follows last week’s approval by MedSafe and this week’s Cabinet approval for use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

An enormous amount of work has gone into preparing to roll out our largest-ever immunisation programme and this has really accelerated in recent weeks. Thank you to all those who have been involved in getting us to this point.

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On arrival, the vaccine will be independently tested for quality assurance, which is another important safety check. The doses will then be formally released to start the first phase of the vaccination programme.

As we have previously discussed, our first priority will be to vaccinate your people working in MIQ facilities and at the border, who New Zealanders owe a debt of gratitude to for helping keep COVID-19 out of our community. We estimate it will take three to four weeks to vaccinate the border and MIQ workers.

We will begin vaccinating in Auckland from 20 February and will have more details on the rollout programme early next week.  Vaccines are expected to be available to many healthcare workers as part of the next group and the wider community in the second half of the year.

While vaccination is not mandatory for New Zealanders, I ask you to use a variety of approaches to encourage all your frontline staff to be vaccinated and ensure they are provided with information to inform their decision. To support you, I’ve included a draft message to send to your workers. Information is also available at Unite Against Covid-19 and Ministry of Health

The Ministry will continue to work closely with your teams to engage with iwi, Pacific and ethnic communities and other key stakeholders across New Zealand to ensure an equitable delivery of the vaccines. 
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We have come far and New Zealand is in a fortunate position with no current community outbreaks or transmission of COVID-19.This is in no small part due to the work of you and your teams.  Getting our people vaccinated is key to locking in the gains we have made.
 
Ngā mihi,
 
Dr Ashley Bloomfield

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