12th February 2021 By Shannon Williams | shannon@tourismticker.com | @tourismticker
The first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine will arrive in New Zealand next week, says prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, Ardern said vaccination of border workers, which included managed isolation and quarantine hotel workers, would start on February 20. A national rollout to the general public would take the entire year to complete.
Next week’s arrival of the vaccine was “well within our scheduled timeframe, and ahead of previous expectations”, Ardern said.
Jacinda Ardern
“That means we should be in a position, all things going to plan, to start vaccinating our border workers from next Saturday the 20th of February.”
The first priority would be the country’s 12,000 border workers, who could be vaccinated within a two- to three-week timeframe.
Ardern added that New Zealand had pre-purchased enough of the vaccine for everyone in New Zealand as well as the Pacific to be vaccinated for free.
Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said New Zealand would receive just under a quarter-of-a-million courses of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021. It would come in waves, likely weekly, with the first shipment expected to be in the low tens of thousands.
Hipkins expected 225,000 courses to arrive by the end of March, split over several deliveries.
The first roll out of the vaccine would be administered to border workers in their workplace. Next in line would be their family members, who would be asked to come to a particular location to be vaccinated. This may or may not be the workplace of the border worker.
Ardern said she did not expect any issues from border workers receiving the vaccine.
“We get a strong sense from border workers they want to protect themselves and their family members. We are expecting good uptake from them,” she said.
She said border workers would not lose their jobs if they did not take the vaccine, but they may not remain in a frontline role.
“We’re not expecting this to be an issue.”
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield said additional logistics would be needed to get the doses ready upon arrival.
Vaccinators would need to do a specific training module for this vaccine, which was a two hour online course that was already underway.
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