New Zealand to donate more COVID-19 vaccines to the Pacific

Wellington: New Zealand will donate 708,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to the Covax Facility to support vaccine programmes in developing countries.

It will also provide the Pfizer Covid vaccine to the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau to support vaccination of their 12 to 15 year olds from October.

Associate Health Minister and Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio said up to 1500 doses will be donated across all three countries.

He said the manufacturer will deliver the AstraZeneca directly to the Covax facility as paperwork and other regulations would make it more complicated if it were first delivered to New Zealand.

Mr Sio said New Zealand has been worked with other countries such as Australia and Japan to help Fiji obtain more vaccines, because Fiji needed it prior to AstraZeneca being approved by MedSafe here.

He said the Ministry of Health will also be able to offer the AstraZeneca vaccine at some point to New Zealanders who cannot have the

Pfizer vaccine.

He said at the outset of the pandemic New Zealand prepurchased four types of vaccines and then received more data from the manufacturers and those countries using the vaccines before deciding to go with Pfizer.

“We had to wait for the advice from MedSafe as they were collecting data from the manufacturers in those countries who were using it.”

He said it is important to release information from data modelling about the pandemic.

“We’re in a place where we do need to start thinking about the future and at the moment we’ve got to have that discussion.

“We’re learning new things all the way through and so we’re having to take that information and add it into the mix of things, continuing to rely on the evidence that our scientific experts are providing for us.”

Mr Sio said it was important to have the discussion about modelling and put it out there for debate.