Staffing and booking systems top obstacle list
Canterbury’s health boss says building a workforce, managing bookings and maintaining ‘‘business as usual’’ health services are the biggest challenges in the region’s Covid-19 vaccination plan.
At this week’s Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) meeting, chief executive Peter Bramley said he was confident the board would be able to increase Covid-19 vaccinations by 200 per cent – from about 3500 to 35,000 doses per week – by the end of June.
‘‘We have a robust plan to get there. There are challenges but we have a clear weekly plan, which we will be reporting to.’’ Bramley said having enough staff and using a national booking system would be the biggest challenges in the region’s roll-out plan.
Another challenge would be maintaining routine health services as some staff would have to be redeployed to the vaccine roll-out.
‘‘It is the most important thing on our agenda at the moment but it is not the only thing on our agenda because we still have to deliver care to our community.
‘‘You can’t stop surgery, you can’t stop cancer treatment, so we are juggling many priorities that must be delivered every day.’’
The board began vaccinating frontline health staff on Monday, in addition to the remaining border workers and their household contacts. The CDHB could not provide the number of border workers and household contacts still requiring vaccination or the number of staff currently employed to work on the roll-out.
About 3200 Canterbury border and managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers had received two doses, while about 1400 of their household contacts had received one dose. The CDHB estimated about 2700 household contacts needed vaccinations in total.
At Thursday’s meeting, Bramley said vaccinations of border workers and their close contacts was almost complete.
‘‘We are largely through border workers, MIQ and close contacts, and the focus now is very much about frontline health staff.’’
Under the Ministry of Health roll-out plan, vaccination of health workers was to start from March.
Bramley said a national booking system would be critical to achieve the target of vaccinating 35,000 people per week by the end of June.
‘‘If we are going to deliver that 35,000 per week, we are going to need a really robust booking system.’’ An online booking system initially used by the CDHB was abandoned following a data breach.
A call centre had been set up to manage phone and email appointment bookings.
On Thursday, Ministry of Health head of data and digital Shayne Hunter said a national vaccine booking system would be ready by the end of May. Ministry staff had focused on development of the Covid Tracer app, inventory and logistics support, and an adverse events reporting system ahead of a vaccine booking system because the first groups to be vaccinated could be managed locally, he said.