500 MIQ staff yet to get jab

More than 500 managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers are yet to receive even one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Almost 88.5 per cent of MIQ workers had received at least one dose of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said. He said that of the 513 unvaccinated staffers, ‘‘at least a quarter’’ were booked in to receive their first dose of vaccine in the coming days.

The Government has outlined border and MIQ workers have until the end of the month to be vaccinated against Covid-19, or they will be moved from the frontline.

As of yesterday, 135,585 doses of the vaccine had been administered across the country. Of these, 7695 were delivered in the past 24 hours.

Of the total number of doses given, 43 per cent had been delivered in the Auckland region, Hipkins said. Of the vaccinations to date, 30,194 people have had their second dose.

Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said shipments of vaccine were arriving weekly, each containing about 60,000-70,000 doses.

Hipkins said there was capacity in the freezers across Auckland to store about 760,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and there were two additional freezers in Christchurch which weren’t being used at present.

As of yesterday, there were about 315,000 doses of vaccine on ice in freezers across the Auckland region, Hipkins said.

Meanwhile, Medsafe – the country’s medicines safety regulator – had approved the ability for the Pfizer vaccine to be stored at about -20 degrees, Bloomfield said.

The ability to use the vaccine from this temperature ‘‘gives us some additional options . . . to get the vaccine out to more remote and rural areas’’, he said.