1m jabs by June: MoH rollout for vaccine
More than one million New Zealanders are expected to be vaccinated by the end of June, according to the Ministry of Health’s newly released plan.
It comes after the Government refused to share its progress numbers on the Ministry of Health website following multiple request from the Herald and criticism of messy handling of public health data.
The plan reveals a breakdown of the number of people who have so far been vaccinated at each District Health Board along with a weekly target of the number expected to be vaccinated by the end of June.
By June 30, the Ministry of Health expects at least 1,161,952 New Zealanders should have received their first jab.
Almost half of those (497,991 people) will be from the Auckland metro region, which accounts for about 26 per cent of the region’s population.
At Canterbury DHB, nearly 101,000 people (16 per cent of the population) should have been given their first dose by then.
And at Capital and Coast and Hutt Valley, at least 65,000 people (14 per cent of its population) should have had their first jab.
Auckland University vaccines expert Dr Helen Petousis-Harris told the
Herald that target was absolutely achievable and the rate that people were being vaccinated was just getting faster and faster.
“We can’t apply how many we have done over the last couple of weeks to how many we can get done in the next couple of months because each week we have got an ever increasing number of vaccinators and our systems are expanding, such as the number of sites we have available.”
In order for every New Zealander to be vaccinated by the end of the year, it will mean that about one million people will need the jab each month.
Petousis-Harris said again that was doable.
“Last year with the flu vaccine rollout, 1.7 million people were vaccinated in six or eight weeks so I think we have got this.”
She said it was a matter of getting our systems and processes working well because that’s what has been slowing us down.
It’s crucial that the ministry releases the number of vaccinators that are available in each region and that we can be assured we have enough, Petousis-Harris said.
To date, 135,500 New Zealanders have been vaccinated across the country.