New Zealand to purchase Covid-19 vaccines for Pacific Island neighbours, including Samoa and Tonga

Authored by stuff.co.nz and submitted by bskyb3
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New Zealand will purchase enough Covid-19 vaccines to cover its Pacific Island neighbours, including Samoa and Tonga.

The Government on Thursday announced it has signed two further pre-purchase agreements for Covid-19 vaccines, allowing it to begin vaccinating New Zealand's entire population from mid-2021.

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said New Zealand would also purchase enough vaccines for New Zealand Realm countries Tokelau, Niue, and the Cook Islands, as well as neighbours Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu, if those countries want to take up the offer.

The Government had allocated $75 million of development assistance money to help roll out the vaccine to these countries.

Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images Foriegn Minister Nanaia Mahuta says New Zealand will support Pacific Island neighbours to roll out Covid-19 vaccines.

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“Pacific countries have worked hard to keep Covid-19 out, or to stamp it out, and New Zealand has been committed to supporting them in this,” Mahuta said in a statement.

“But their success has been hard-won. A safe and effective vaccine will be key to the region’s economic and social recovery.”

Some $10m of the $75m assistance funding will go to the global COVAX facility, which works to provide equal access vaccines to countries across the world.

Covid-stricken countries across the world are urgently vaccinating their populations, as the virus spreads and deaths mount.

The United Kingdom has vaccinated 130,000 people since rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine a week ago, as the country goes into lockdown again over winter to ward of the virus’ spread.

Covid-19 deaths in the United States have eclipsed 300,000 this week, as the first health workers received the Pfizer vaccine after it was urgently given the green light by the Food and Drug Administration.

New Zealand has no cases of Covid-19 within the community currently, and 43 cases within quarantine facilities at the border.

The two new agreements announced on Thursday are for two-dose vaccines: one for 7.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will cover 3.8m people; and another for 10.72m doses of a vaccine from Novovax, enough for 5.36m people.

BROOK SABIN/Stuff Niue is one of the countries to be offered the Covid-19 vaccine by New Zealand.

The roll out of any vaccine would be subject to passing clinical trials, and subject to the approval of the regulator, Medsafe. The Government said Medsafe had been primed to provide a streamlined approval process.

“We are moving as fast as we can, but we also want to ensure the vaccine is safe for New Zealanders,” Ardern said.

“Never before has the entire globe sought to vaccinate the entire population at the same time. This will be a sustained roll out over months not weeks but our pre-purchase agreements means New Zealand is well positioned to get on with it as soon as it is proven safe to do so.”

Cimexus on December 17th, 2020 at 01:30 UTC »

It should be noted that NZ isn't alone in this. Australia, Canada and others have purchased many times more doses than they need for their domestic population and intend on providing the excess to poorer countries.

thebigman045 on December 17th, 2020 at 00:23 UTC »

Niue, Tokelau and the Cook Islands are kind of under NZ's wing in regards to governing them and by vaccinating the other islands that means they can trade freely with those islands helping to get their economy back on track, and then also creating a bubble so Kiwis can travel and thus provide the tourism dollars they rely on.

MNConcerto on December 16th, 2020 at 22:22 UTC »

New Zealand leading the way on this pandemic once again.