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Dear John, Vaccines against Covid-19 – Where are ours? It is time to stop relying on kindness and spin and start listening to the medical experts. We need Covid-19 vaccines in New Zealand. Currently we have none although we were told we would be at the front of the queue back in November last year. 51 other countries from the UK and the USA to Bulgaria and Latvia are already well into vaccinating millions of residents. Now we are told that our frontline workers at the border including aviation and maritime workers MIQ staff and testing nurses will not be vaccinated until April and the rest of us might get a vaccination from June or July. New Zealand has a person testing positive for the South African strain of the virus right now. The person has caught it while in a quarantine hotel. So, surely we need to be getting vaccinations underway right now. Waiting three months or longer is just going to cause greater anxiety for many. The current situation also raises the issue of quarantine facilities. National have been calling for purpose built quarantine facilities for almost a year now. One reason is to avoid the systems failure that inadequate air conditioning facilities in hotels may cause by allowing infectious droplets to be circulated through any number of guests’ rooms. The new forms of the Covid-19 virus are putting extra strain on our current quarantine hotels. Dr Michael Baker who received a New Year Honour for his epidemiological work, supports the use of purpose-built facilities and reducing the number of people allowed to return per day especially from countries with the more infectious strains of the virus. He also thinks that decision and actions on all of this need to be happening much faster. The fact that Australia has now stopped New Zealanders entering without having to quarantine is a big blow to our hopes of establishing a travel bubble with them or with other countries in the South Pacific. It will affect New Zealanders wanting to travel overseas and it will continue to affect tourism. It will also continue to prevent students coming to study here in our schools and Universities while we cannot vaccinate our communities. It is an economic and moral imperative to start vaccinating as soon as possible and April is too late. Both National and Act are continuing to call for the Minister Chris Hipkins to act quicker on procuring vaccines for New Zealand and it seems that some may be available for frontline workers in seven to eight weeks but that is hardly a big improvement on the April rollout. The Minister’s claims that we, New Zealand, are now down the queue because other countries are in greater need is not good enough. There are many examples of other countries with low rates of infection and low deaths being well into the vaccination process already. It is not good enough to say approval from Medsafe is needed when millions have been vaccinated overseas with very few complications. Back in December the PM told us that the Government was in the process of securing contracts for supply from four manufacturers and that we would be receiving enough vaccine for ourselves and our Pacific neighbours, soon. Despite this, she does not seem to want to fast track the availability of vaccines now, either. The Ministry of Health is saying we are able to wait and get our vaccine approved through Medsafe because we are not in a crisis situation. Well I do not support this strategy as it appears we have the fast spreading and more severe South African strain of Covid threatening our communities in the north of the North Island. And being slow and cautious about vaccinating our population is ignoring the reality of the situation. There have been 29 cases of the new UK Covid-19 variant in New Zealand’s MIQ facilities. Starting our vaccination programme as soon as possible is going to give New Zealanders some optimism for the year ahead. Quick action is a critical factor in the face of the more virulent strains of Covid-19 that New Zealand is facing right now. Please continue to use the Tracing App, wash your hands and stay home if you are sick. Best wishes and take care, Judith
Hon Judith Collins |
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