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New Zealand began the official rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday, while Australia finalized its intention to start vaccinations on Monday, a new phase in the fight against the virus that both countries have widely content.
A small group of medical professionals were injected in Auckland on Friday ahead of the larger deployment which officially began with border staff and so-called managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers on Saturday, officials said.
In Australia, hotel and healthcare quarantine workers will also be the first cohort to be vaccinated at 16 Pfizer vaccination centers across the country, alongside older Australians in elderly care facilities.
“Today we are launching the largest vaccination program in our history, vaccinating the first member of our border staff, a crucial step to protect everyone in Aotearoa,” said the New Zealand Minister of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, Auckland, using the indigenous Maori name.
“We will spend these first days and weeks in a measured way to make sure our systems and processes are sound.”
New Zealand expects its nationwide deployment covering the country’s population of 5 million to take a full year, while Australia aims to vaccinate its 25 million citizens by October.
No new COVID-19 infections have been reported in communities in either country in the past 24 hours despite tens of thousands of tests, officials said.
The two countries ended local closures this week after a cluster was released from a quarantine hotel in Melbourne and as New Zealand officials investigate the discovery of a strain of a highly transmissible British variant in three members of an Auckland family.
The two countries rank among the top 10 in the world in a COVID-19 performance index for their successful management of the pandemic.
Australia has recorded just under 29,000 cases and 909 deaths, while New Zealand has recorded just 26 deaths out of 2,350 cases.
(Reuters)
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