(Reuters) – New Zealand officially launches COVID-19 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Saturday, as Australia finalizes plans to start vaccinations on Monday, a new step in tackling the virus that both countries have kept in check. for the most part.
A small group of medical professionals were injected into Auckland on Friday before the wider launch, which officially began with border staff and so-called managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) staff on Saturday, officials said.
In Australia, hotel quarantine and health workers will also be the first cohort to be inoculated into 16 Pfizer vaccination centers across the country, along with older Australians, at nursing homes.
“Today, we are launching the largest immunization program in our history, vaccinating the first frontier workforce, a critical step in protecting everyone in Aotearoa,” New Zealand Health Minister Ashley Bloomfield told reporters in Auckland, using the name indigenous Maori of the country. .
“We will travel through these few days and weeks in a measured way to ensure that our systems and processes are sound.”
New Zealand expects its nationwide launch, with a population of 5 million countries, to last a full year, while Australia aims to inoculate its 25 million citizens by October.
No new COVID-19 infections have been reported in communities across the country in the past 24 hours, despite tens of thousands of tests, officials said.
Both nations put an end to local blockades this week after a group came out of a quarantine hotel in Melbourne and as New Zealand authorities investigate how a strain of a highly transmissible variant of the UK was found. to three members of an Auckland family.
The two countries rank in the top 10 globally in a COVID-19 performance index for successful pandemic management.
Australia recorded just under 29,000 cases and 909 deaths, while New Zealand recorded only 26 deaths out of 2,350 cases.
Report by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Edited by Lincoln Feast.