11. Question No. 11—COVID-19 ResponseCHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 ResponseQuestion No. 11—COVID-19 Response11. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How many COVID-19 vaccinations have been administered in New Zealand as at 6 April 2021 and is he satisfied with the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out to date?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): As at midnight last night 90286 doses of the vaccine had been administered to date: 71013 first doses and 19273 second doses. That's about 95 percent of the allocation plan so it is slightly behind schedule. I'm broadly satisfied with the roll-out to date but I do expect the number of daily doses administered to increase significantly over the next week or so. DHBs forecast delivering around 55000 doses in the next seven days—around 7500 a day on average—and we're pushing to see that getting up more towards 10000 a day on average over the next few weeks.Chris Bishop: Why has New Zealand administered only 90286 of the 390413 of the COVID-19 vaccination doses which is what the ministry said should have been administered by now in this leaked Ministry of Health report from January this year?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Of course the Ministry of Health put forward in the early part of the year—or late last year and early into this year—a variety of different models for the potential vaccine roll-out. At that point they didn't have information on when vaccines were going to be arriving throughout the year and particularly any indication of when the vaccine arrivals were likely to be in the second part of the year.One of the challenges around the inventory management is ensuring that we have enough to give people their second dose after they've received their first dose within the three-week window that we're aiming for to do that—or just past the three-week window—so that they can get those second doses on time.We are also aiming as the Prime Minister has just mentioned to ensure that we don't end up with a peak and trough period where we scale the vaccine campaign up and then run out of doses and have to scale down again before we start to see the bigger numbers arrive. We have been focused on scaling up sustainably making sure that the vaccines are delivered to our border workforce and their close contacts—their household contacts—first of all and then expanding out to our front-line health workers and then beyond that. We have used this early opportunity to test our systems to make sure that we are doing this in a way that as we get larger quantities of vaccines arriving we're able to scale up in order to make sure that we're getting them out the door.Chris Bishop: In relation to his comment that the information I just disclosed was provided before the Government had confidence around the Pfizer delivery vaccine schedule is he aware that the report I just mentioned has preceding pages in which it makes mention of the precise Pfizer delivery vaccine as of 15 February 2021 and why is he using that as an excuse as to why the Government has delivered just 23 percent of the 390000 that were meant to have been delivered this week?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well one of those two questions is clearly incorrect. He can't claim that he has a document from January that has information from February in it. Hon David Parker: Genius!Chris Bishop: Can he give—SPEAKER: Order! Order! That's—well no we'll have a withdraw and apologise for whoever made that comment.Hon David Parker: I withdraw and apologise.Chris Bishop: Is he aware that the document I have just cited to him is dated 26 January 2021 but outlines the Pfizer delivery schedule from 15 February 2021 and outlines for the Government what that will mean in terms of the delivery schedule for the vaccine programme and why is the Government so behind on its administration of the vaccine?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We are not. We are tracking at about 95 percent of the allocation schedule that we have been working to. I don't know the document the member is referring to but I do struggle to see how it could contain information from February if it's dated in January.Chris Bishop: Can he give a categorical assurance that New Zealand will have a nationwide booking system for COVID-19 vaccinations?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Ministry of Health team are working to have a nationwide booking system up and running by May—or during May.Chris Bishop: One or two?SPEAKER: It's up to the whips. You've got two extras.Chris Bishop: Why has New Zealand only administered 1.9 COVID-19 vaccine doses per 100 people in our population the second-lowest in the OECD and how does he square this number with his comment earlier in the year that we would be at the front of the queue?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There are a couple of reasons for that. One of course is that we made the decision not to rush the vaccine approval process as many other OECD countries who have been dealing with widespread outbreaks chose to do and New Zealanders ultimately can have good confidence in our vaccine programme because of that. It's been through a very thorough approvals process. And yes we have had the opportunity to draw on the clinical and field trials from other countries as a result of our decision to do that. The second is that we did make a decision to switch the way we were viewing our vaccine portfolio to rely primarily on a Pfizer-based vaccine campaign. We had a variety of reasons for doing that. It did mean that some of the vaccine doses that we expected to arrive in the second quarter we have not taken delivery of because we are increasing the deliveries of our Pfizer vaccine in the second half of the year.