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The government’s new Covid-19 vaccine rollout is faster than doctors and district health boards anticipated, leaving some struggling to reorganize its plan or questioning its role.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced that kiwis would be divided into four groups when he unveiled the long-awaited schedule for the launch of the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday afternoon.
Retired doctors and nurses could be pressured along with pharmacists to help with the mass immunization program, while emerging clinics can mobilize in vulnerable areas.
Bernat Armangué / AP
Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines, prepared for administration at a vaccination center.
Border and Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) workers and their families will be vaccinated at the end of March.
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Immunization of the second group, New Zealand’s 480,000 frontline health workers and 234,000 people living in “high-risk settings” such as nursing homes, has already started and will continue until May.
The third round of vaccinations will be for everyone else 75 and older, then those 65 and older, then people with pre-existing health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, respiratory conditions, and cancer.
The government expects to begin vaccinating this group, 1.7 million people, in May.
The rest of the population, two million people, will begin to receive the vaccine from July.
But doctors want clear answers about the vaccine launch and the role they should play in it, said New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) General Practitioner Representative Vanessa Weenink.
“We are still waiting for the details of how GPs will be involved.”
She said the new time frame will be a challenging question if GPs are solely responsible for administering vaccines, and the practices may need to involve more staff.
“NZMA wants more transparency.
“The longer we have to wait to find out what the plan is, the longer it will take to implement coordinated plans and processes.”
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Under the new plan, all border and MIQ workers, as well as their close contacts, will be vaccinated this month.
An hour before Hipkins’ announcement, the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) said Things The second part of the vaccine launches, MIQ household contacts and border workers, was scheduled to begin in April.
That group is now required to be vaccinated by the end of March, and a CDHB spokesperson said staff were struggling Wednesday afternoon to formulate a plan to meet the new time frame.
There are an estimated 7,500 household contacts in this second group.
About 20 percent of New Zealand’s 12,000 border and MIQ workers are based in Canterbury, and the CDHB has vaccinated 1960 of these workers so far, 85 percent of this workforce.
Canterbury Primary Response Group GP Clinical Leader Hannah Gordon said the current plan for the region’s deployment would be a mixed model.
It will include special vaccination clinics, which could be partially staffed by retired medical workers, as well as other sectors of the medical workforce that have received special training.
“Potentially, pharmacies could also participate, as well as some emerging mobile outreach clinics for rural or vulnerable communities, but much will depend on the storage requirements of the Pfizer vaccine.”
Gordon said that at this stage the proportion of the Canterbury deployment that will take place in physician surgeries is unknown.
“[We] I think it’s important to have multiple ways that people can access the vaccine so that as many as possible get vaccinated.
He said that while the launch of the new vaccine seems faster than previous suggestions about what the time frame might be, he thinks GPs can handle it.
“Primary care is good enough to step up and get the job done.”
