Plenty of doses but limited active staff

Fewer than half of Kiwi vaccinators who have completed training to administer the Covid19 jab are active in the Government’s programme.

Meanwhile, new figures released to Stuff show 287,000 doses of vaccine are in storage awaiting distribution.

Just over 71,000 first doses and 19,000 second doses have been administered so far.

Stuff understands that as of the beginning of April, about 1600 vaccinators had completed their training. But only about 640 of those vaccinators were active in the programme administering doses, it is understood.

A week later, the number of people trained to administer the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine via the Immunisation Advisory Centre’s online training had risen to 1843, but just 763 of those had given vaccines as of Wednesday.

The Ministry of Health has yet to answer a question from Stuff as to why the proportion of trained vaccinators administering doses remains at about 40 per cent.

As a result of growing demand for vaccinators, the Ministry of Health is urgently investigating ways to find more candidates as the programme ramps up.

People in ‘‘Group 2’’, deemed high-risk frontline workers and people living in high-risk places, began receiving the vaccine in April. There are about 480,000 people in this group.

A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said trained vaccinators included people from New Zealand’s regular authorised vaccination workforce of about 5400.

It also includes about 4000 provisionally authorised vaccinators who had completed a foundation course to prepare for the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out.

‘‘As has been previously signalled this week, New Zealand’s vaccination roll-out is about to significantly ramp up as we move further into Group 2 this month,’’ the spokeswoman said.

‘‘We’ve also got about 1600 pharmacists and about 3800 GPs nationwide who we may also ask to support our vaccination rollout as it progresses.’’

Several weeks ago, the Immunisation Advisory Centre began a training course for GPs who want to give a Covid-19 vaccine. ‘‘On top of this, we’ve had more than 5000 people register to date with the ministry’s website current surge database.

‘‘This database is for people not currently in the health workforce, but willing to be involved in the vaccine roll-outs.’’

The ministry has yet to complete its national vaccine plan for the rest of the year.

‘‘Once the plan is finalised, we will make it publicly available.’’