Effort to pump out jabs will include rural focus
WELLINGTON: People will be able to walk in to a clinic and get the Pfizer vaccine jab from July, when the Government plans to be able to roll out about 280,000 doses a week for six months.
Directorgeneral of health Ashley Bloomfield said efforts would be made — including through mobile stations — to ensure people in rural and hardertoaccess areas had as much of a chance to get a jab as anyone.
He also revealed a $1 billion budget for vaccines, which the Ministry of Health is yet to totally spend.
Dr Bloomfield also said he would move to allay GP concerns about their role in the rollout by writing to them by the end of the week.
He did not want to put a figure on what New Zealand would need to reach ‘‘population immunity’’, which has previously been estimated at about 70% of the population.
That is also proportion of the population — 69% — who say they are likely to take the vaccine, according to a survey released by the Ministry of Health yesterday.
One in five respondents said they were unlikely to take a vaccine if offered, and 9.4% said they would ‘‘definitely not’’.
Concerns about the vaccine were mainly about the longterm effects (58%) and safety (40%).
Only 48% of 18 to 24yearolds said they would definitely get vaccinated, but this jumped 20 percentage points last December, which Dr Bloomfield said was down to ‘‘confidence in our programme’’.
The survey — conducted online by Horizon Research — had about 1400 respondents in September and December last year, and February and March this year.
Medsafe’s latest report into adverse events shows no potential safety issues with the Pfizer vaccine, a serious reaction in about one in every 3700 people, and a nonserious reaction in one in every 108 people.
The report, released on Wednesday, covers the threeweek period from the start of the rollout until March 13, including 22,588 doses.
This equates to about 22,588 people, given very few, if any, would have had a second dose.
One person can also identify more than one symptom, so the proportions of adverse reactions per person are estimates.
University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said it was ‘‘still clear that there was an incredibly low proportion of people who have anything classified as a serious reaction’’.
The most frequent ‘‘adverse event’’ was dizziness (49 instances), followed by headaches (37), nausea (36), fainting (22), faintness (9), redness (8), fatigue (8), fever (8), injection site pain (8) and swelling (8).
These are the known sideeffects of the Pfizer vaccine.
Earlier yesterday, Medsafe asked for more information from pharmaceutical company Janssen before making a decision to approve its Covid19 vaccine.
The United States, the European Union and South Africa have temporarily halted the introduction of the company’s jab due to fears over rare blood clots.
Two new cases of Covid19 were reported in managed isolation facilities yesterday. — The New Zealand Herald