Rollout needs to ‘scale up’
Auditor-General’s report favourable but there are fears for second half of year
Auditor-General John Ryan says a “significant scale-up” is needed if the Government is to hit its vaccination goals.
Published yesterday, the AuditorGeneral’s look at planning for the nationwide rollout of the Covid-19 assessed how ready the health sector was to meet the Government’s goal of vaccinating as many people as possible, aged 16 and over, by the end of 2021.
It found some good early progress, noting that at the time of the audit nearly 400,000 doses had been administered.
However, it also warned that what is in place now would not be enough when the number of people to be vaccinated increased over the second half of the year.
“I am not yet confident that all the pieces will fall into place quickly enough for the programme to ramp up to the level required over the second half of 2021. There is a real risk that it will take more time than currently anticipated to get there.”
Ryan noted that problems were inevitable in a programme of this scale and complexity.
“The Ministry has a high-level plan in place, but there is still a lot of work to do. Some aspects of the plan are still not fully developed. Information systems are still being worked on. If everything goes to plan these will be ready, but only just in time.”
The audit found that while New Zealand had secured enough doses to vaccinate all New Zealanders and some Pacific countries, uncertainty about when the doses would arrive could affect the timing of the rollout.
Ryan noted that at the time of the report, there were “significant risks” around the number of vaccinators, the distribution model to ensure vaccine doses were delivered to the right place, at the right time and ensuring that Maori, Pasifika, people with disabilities, and hard to reach communities were vaccinated.
“More work is needed to ensure contingency plans are in place in case of any disruption — such as with the vaccine supply, not having enough vaccinators, or a further community outbreak.”
The report made six recommendations to help the Ministry of Health improve its communications with the public; complete its contingency plans; and provide more guidance and clarity to the wider health sector.
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins yesterday issued a statement saying work was under way to ensure the public rollout was in hand.
He said a “milestone” of training for 5000 vaccinators had been reached as the health sector geared up for the public rollout after June.
“It’s important to remember that the most significant roll-out won’t begin until July when we start vaccinating the general public so we’re preparing our vaccination workforce with that timeline in mind.
“Current modelling indicates we’ll need around 1600 full-time equivalent vaccinators when our vaccination rollout peaks later this year.
“Not all of the people trained so far will be available to work full-time, so additional initiatives are also under way to further boost our pool of vaccinators.”
The Ministry of Health was looking into using healthcare workers who were not still practising as part of the vaccinations workforce.
Hipkins is due to give another update on the vaccine programme on Wednesday.