‘‘Behind the scenes, the feeling is, the good publicity over the vaccine rollout is not warranted. In reality, it is a secretive, sluggish, spin-fest.’’
ANDREA VANCE
There is some incredulity within Government circles about how much good publicity New Zealand’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout has generated. Behind the scenes, the feeling is, it is not warranted. In reality, it is a secretive, sluggish, spinfest.
While other countries race ahead with their inoculation programmes, New Zealand is only a fortnight or so in.
As of Friday, it has managed to deliver jabs to just three-quarters of the border workforce.
In Britain, which started administering the jab in December, more than one in three adults have received their first vaccination. Close to a million have had their second dose and their end-of-July vaccination target looks achievable.
Turkey, Bangladesh, Morocco and Chile have administered millions of vaccinations. In Bloomberg’s global vaccine tracker, New Zealand doesn’t even rank in the top 40.
Yet Jacinda Ardern’s Government basks in the glory of headlines that declare the national programme ahead of schedule, and in front of Australia.
This is because the flow of information about the programme is tightly controlled, and heavily politicised.
It comes via Beehive-issued press releases and carefully orchestrated Government briefings.
The tone is always rah-rah. On Thursday, an announcement about vaccines was accompanied by a Labour Party logo.
Before the election, in September, then-Health Minister Chris Hipkins insisted New Zealand would be at the front of the queue, despite choosing not to sign up to buy doses of any one potential vaccine.
It wasn’t true: about 80 countries got off the starting blocks before New Zealand.
This, we are told, is because of our success: the country is low priority because health systems have not been overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases.
There is no way to know if this is true. The procurement process and any details of the rollout are shrouded in secrecy and ‘‘contractual obligations’’ that do not seem to apply to other nations.
We do know that New Zealand has secured
1.5 million doses of the vaccine (enough for 750,000 New Zealanders.) There are in-principle agreements to purchase up to 5 million doses of a Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine, 10.72m Novavax doses and 7.6m doses from AstraZeneca.
Medsafe is yet to approve any of these for use, with the first in the portfolio not likely to get signoff until mid-April.
As the world scrambles for vaccines, the Government does not know – or is not saying – exactly when these batches will touch down.
Other nations have already detailed the priority order for different population and occupation groups and tentative timelines. Major public figures – like the Queen and US Vice-President Kamala Harris – have disclosed their vaccinations to promote the deployment, encourage others and ease concern.
As well as when, we do not know where we will be vaccinated, or how we will be notified when it’s our turn. Will there be super-clinics, and how will smaller GP premises cope with the requirement for 30-minute post-injection monitoring?
For a government that received much-deserved praise for leadership communications during the emergency response, they have been reticent to disclose much beyond superficial details and vague targets.
The administration is now visibly exhausted after more than a year in crisis mode. They have become extremely thin-skinned when it comes to ‘‘bad news’’ stories. That’s led to a tendency to over-control the optics and narrative. Setting out a timeline and delivery targets opens the Government up to criticism if they can’t stick to it.
But this isn’t politics. It’s the biggest public health exercise the country has ever seen. And it’s cynical and wrong to withhold the gameplan from the team of five million.
Even with border and MIQ workers, and their families inoculated, some risk still remains.
To date, none of the ‘‘border leaks’’ have ever been fully explained by officials, so it is imperative momentum doesn’t diminish once those on the frontline are protected.
Uncertainty, disruption and now alert fatigue, means the public are reasonably entitled to a timeline back to normality.
The administration is now visibly exhausted after more than a year in crisis mode. They have become extremely thin-skinned when it comes to ‘bad news’ stories.