10. Question No. 10—COVID-19 ResponseCHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 ResponseQuestion No. 10—COVID-19 Response10. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Does he stand by all his statements and actions in relation to the Government's response to COVID-19?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Yes—in particular the work already undertaken by all DHBs which has seen them administer over 668000 vaccines to people across New Zealand well in excess of their plans.Chris Bishop: Why does the Canterbury District Health Board not have enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to complete its group 1 and 2 populations and which other health boards are in this situation?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Vaccination of group 1 is near completed nationwide vaccination of group 2 in Canterbury is well under way—and I know in many of their aged-care facilities a majority of residents have received their first dose—and thirdly vaccination of group 2 will continue throughout July.Chris Bishop: Why has it taken until June 2021 for the Government to allow saliva testing to be offered as an alternative to the nasopharyngeal PCR test for workers at the border when the Roche-Simpson report recommended it be rolled out as soon as possible in September 2020?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: On behalf of the Minister: there's been a process to work through with identifying the correct use of saliva testing—and in particular how that is integrated with the nasopharyngeal PCR test which we know is the most reliable gold-standard test—and in addition a tender process to run.Chris Bishop: Has he seen the comments of the Hon Phil Twyford on Facebook: We are working on a longer-term border plan and exploring how we can expand MIQ that will allow more people into New Zealand."; if so can he share some more details of this quite important announcement made by Mr Twyford via a Facebook comment?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: No I am not aware of my colleague's Facebook post.Chris Bishop: Will the vaccine roll-out scale up enough to complete the 493837 doses in the next four weeks as the Ministry of Health model indicates will happen?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: On behalf of the Minister: he has been clear in his statements that the biggest influence on vaccination doses administered throughout this month and next will be supply. We'll be receiving an update on supply very shortly and may need to adjust the model but currently our current plan is the model as it is published.Hon Michael Wood: Which of the Government's policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic does the Minister believe have contributed to New Zealand being ranked the No. 1 country in the Bloomberg COVID resilience index recently updated?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Well there could be many reasons including our strong public health response which included an excellent response at the border; the set-up when we had no existing quarantine facilities of an integrated managed isolation and quarantine facility; the excellent contact tracing system that we have built over time; and the wide-scale testing system not to mention the development of multiple pieces of information technology to oversee this."