Seymour David; Hipkins Chris; Mallard TrevorMINISTERIAL STATEMENTSCOVID-19—Alert Level ChangesDebate resumed.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to first of all thank the Minister for COVID-19 recovery for his comments and also give on behalf of ACT our most heartfelt condolences for those people who are suffering the effects of lockdowns—those people in small business where people feel enormous stress about their future; those kids who are missing out on educational opportunities; those people who need healthcare and risk being displaced as hospital capacity is reserved for potential COVID cases. New Zealanders have played an extraordinary part following the rules getting vaccinations when they're available and to some extent using QR code scanning but there remain a number of questions about the Government's response and in particular whether or not the Government could have done far more in the past 18 months in order to prepare for the current Delta outbreak and questions about what it will do next to ensure some greater certainty in future.I'd like to put a few questions to the Minister particularly in relation to vaccination. The Minister said on 22 August that there were 750000 doses in the country having just received a total of 380000 that weekend. A week later the Prime Minister told us there were 840000 doses after an additional 320000 were received. I'd like the Minister to explain how you can have 750000 use twice as many as you received and end up with 90000 more than you started with?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): It's very easily answered: we don't hold all of the vaccines in a central store. There are two different numbers here: there's the number of vaccines in the country that have not been used and the number that are being held in the central store. At the moment we have over 300000 in our central store but nearly half a million are out distributed around our vaccination centres and have yet to be used.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): How then does the Minister reconcile his statement that there were 750000 doses in the country when the Ministry of Health recorded only 459000 in the central store on the same day?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Because not all of the vaccine doses are stored in the central store; some of them have already been distributed to vaccination sites.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): So is the Minister now telling us that there are half a million distributed to vaccination sites at any time and if so can he tell us how many are in the country today?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I don't think the member has been listening to the answers that I've been giving him. I just indicated to him that we've got just over 300000 in our central store and just under half a million distributed around the country at our vaccination centres. Of course our vaccination centres are doing a phenomenal rate of vaccinations at the moment so I cannot give him an up-to-the-minute update of how many they are holding versus how many they have just administered.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Why won't the Government simply publish both numbers if they know them and are able to announce them at press conferences?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): As I've indicated to the member—and again if he perhaps listens to the answers he won't need to waste his questioning time—because the answer to that is quite clear: we don't have up-to-the-minute information because we are not asking the vaccination centres to report the number of vaccinations they are doing every minute.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): The strategic advice from Professor Sir David Skegg said that New Zealand will have more options for responding to COVID-19 when the vaccination programme is complete. I asked Professor Skegg earlier last week what he meant by the vaccination programme being complete. He said that he had not defined it instead leaving it for the Government to define. I wonder if the Minister could explain what it is that he thinks of when he talks about the vaccination programme being complete and how will New Zealanders know it's complete if there is no vaccination target?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): The epidemiologists have been very clear that setting a numerical target—particularly a numerical target as low as some Opposition members have been suggesting—is not necessarily the best way forward for New Zealand. Our goal is unambiguous which is to ensure that every New Zealander who is eligible has the opportunity to get a vaccination by the end of the year and as we can do so safely expand eligibility to additional population groups—to younger New Zealanders. The member and the House will have seen that the Government recently made a decision around that to extend to the 12-plus age cohort who weren't previously eligible and we've done that once we have been convinced that it is safe to do so. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On what date did the Government first begin discussing with other countries borrowing Pfizer vaccine doses in case of New Zealand facing a shortfall? Was it earlier this year was it this month or was it within the last week?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Our discussions with Pfizer and with other potential supply partners around vaccine access for New Zealand have been ongoing. I don't believe it would be in the public interest for me to reveal all of the intricacies of those discussions.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): We are not asking for any intricacies; just was it in the last week the last month or earlier this year that those discussions began?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Discussions have been ongoing over the last year around vaccine supply.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Were those discussions in relation to borrowing additional Pfizer vaccine doses from other countries?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): There have been discussions with other countries since the beginning of the vaccination programme around vaccination supply. All countries have been grappling with this. Of course our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade network our political leaders and others have been in discussions around vaccine supply since before vaccines were even approved.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Has he his officials or anybody in the Ministry of Health at all—or the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment for that matter—offered to pay additional money to Pfizer as Canada has done to get additional doses faster? Have they discussed with AstraZeneca getting additional vaccine doses in the last two months? Or is it the case as the Prime Minister alluded to this morning that it is not possible to have vaccines from other suppliers because the supply chain just isn't set up to distribute them?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In answer to the question around AstraZeneca the New Zealand Government remains committed to a Pfizer-based vaccination campaign at this point and that is what we are absolutely focused on.In terms of the issue around Canada what the member refers to is some discussions that the Canadians undertook with Pfizer late last year when the Pfizer vaccine was still in its very early stages of production to increase production in order to facilitate access to a very limited number—and we are talking hundreds of thousands of doses not millions of doses—in the early part of their emergency vaccine approval process which is not something the New Zealand Government has done. I have had conversations directly with representatives of Pfizer to discuss this issue. Pfizer have been very clear: their production the production that they have of the vaccine is fully committed around the globe and they are not willing to offer rich countries the opportunity to pay more in order to displace countries who cannot afford to do that—which suggests that big pharma has a higher ethical and moral standard than the ACT Party does.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Ah well! Of the 17 cases announced today that were not in households with existing cases can the Minister tell us how many of them were infected after level 4 conditions commenced? And if he doesn't have access to today's numbers would he be able to tell us how many of the cases that have been reported from outside existing infected households were infected outside that household since level 4 began?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): No I don't have that information in the form that the member asks for. Dealing with data around case investigations is always one of the big challenges when you're dealing with an outbreak of the size we're dealing with where there's over 600 cases. The key thing I think the public would want assurance of is that the people who need to know the various information about each one of those 600-plus cases do know that information and that they are providing information to us in as timely a manner as possible to support decision making. I don't have the particular breakdown of data that the member has asked for.SPEAKER: The time for the Opposition is concluded. There is an opportunity for reply if the Minister wishes.