Mixed views on ability to hit vaccine target Lobby system raises doubts

A goal to vaccinate 90 per cent of all eligible New Zealanders against Covid-19 by the end of the year has been labelled a stretch by one expert, but ‘‘definitely achievable’’ by another.

Improving accessibility, supporting the vaccine-hesitant and a focus on youth populations would help get New Zealand closer to the goal, experts agreed.

In March, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there was no set target for Covid19 vaccination, but he hoped to see 90 per cent coverage by the end of the year.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker believed the target was definitely achievable but the biggest hurdle was still accessibility.

Booking vaccines online and then being required to drive to a location to get one added barriers to the process, Baker said, and new initiatives such as a Mr Whippy-style mobile vaccination bus were great, but more were needed.

Over time, hesitancy towards the vaccine should reduce as it became more normalised, he said.

‘‘I think a lot of that resistance was when people didn’t know so much about the vaccine, didn’t know people who have had it, and I think perhaps thought they didn’t need to worry. I guess if there is any silver lining to the current Delta outbreak it’s that it’s making it very real for everyone now. It is reminding people how important vaccination is,’’ he said.

Baker wants vaccination efforts in Auckland to go ‘‘all out’’.

‘‘I think there is a pretty intense boost there at the moment, but I don’t think we should spare any efforts to get it as high as possible and as fast as possible in Auckland,’’ he said.

Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre and University of Auckland associate professor Dr Nikki Turner believed a 90 per cent target was a stretch.

‘‘I think the countries that are doing well are getting over 80 per cent. Some countries get higher than that, but it’s quite a challenge.’’

Turner said vaccinating younger populations would need to be a focus, because young people tended to be more distracted with other things, and were healthier so less likely to engage with health services.

‘‘Often, they haven’t had the visibility of illness, unless they’ve got chronic illness themselves. Many young people have very little contact with health services, so they don’t tend to think on a day-to-day basis about what it would be like to be really sick.’’

Healthcare systems and communities need to come together to engage with Ma¯ ori, Pasifika, refugee, migrant, disabled, rural, and isolated communities in order to reduce any barriers, Turner said.

Ensuring people felt supported and confident in the science and avoid the ‘‘echo chamber of myths and misinformation,’’ was needed to achieve the target, Turner believed, but not making people feel bad or marginalised when they have fears and concerns was also important, she said.

‘‘The other thing that many people miss is that a lot of people have a needle phobia, and building support around those people is needed.

‘‘It’s a mixture of all of those issues. There’s no one thing . . . all of those issues we’ve got to work on,’’ she said.

Vaccinologist and Auckland

University Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris said reaching the 90 per cent target would be favourable, but said the question was whether it was possible.

‘‘I think we could get really close, but I think there is still a significant minority of people who still have questions they feel have not been addressed.

‘‘We probably need a whole lot of things, but mainly we probably need people to feel that their concerns are being heard, and they have the opportunity to talk about them and address them in more of a community or one-onone setting ... rather than pumping out more information.

‘‘If that was going to be effective it would’ve already been effective,’’ she said.

Different community-specific strategies, such as drop-in centres where people could have a cup of tea and a discussion would be a good idea, Petousis-Harris said.

‘‘Having people that are comfortable and happy to talk about it, and have the hard conversations with people and answer challenging questions,’’ she said.

‘‘The current Delta outbreak . . . is reminding people how important vaccination is,’’ Professor Michael Baker, epidemiologist

Whether she secures a place or not, there’s one dilemma Kridle will still have to face, with a daughter in Australia and a son in Christchurch. ‘‘My heart will be torn in two.’’

Associate Deputy Secretary for Managed Isolation and Quarantine Andrew Milne said the lobby system was being tried in response to ‘‘user feedback’’ and was intended to make booking more transparent and create a more level playing field for people trying to access the site: ‘‘MIQ will closely monitor how well the lobby system works and whether any further changes are needed.’’

Milne said there were 198,010 people registered in the system but this figure did not distinguish between people who had secured a voucher and already travelled, and people who have not secured a voucher. That number may also contain duplicate entries, he said.

‘‘It is not possible to accurately determine how many people who are registered in the system are waiting for an MIQ spot.’’

Milne said while they weren’t sure what demand would be like when the system launched, on average there were 17,000-19,000 users on the site daily before the system was paused.

Mike Moore, based in New Zealand, works with the Grounded Kiwis group of New Zealanders overseas who want to come home.

He said he has been managing a lot of the technical issues with the new system and has been working with Kiwis on Facebook to help navigate the room: ‘‘It is indeed a lottery system, almost game-show like. I suspect it’s going to be very disappointing.’’

Moore said the upside of the new system was that it removed the ‘‘horrible process’’ that required people to keep constantly looking at a website.

‘‘But if we just leave aside the process for a minute, I think the primary point is that it’s not addressing the fundamental issue that supply is woefully, woefully short of meeting demand.’’

He said the initial allocation of about 3000 rooms was not much.

‘‘We know the occupation is 4000 per fortnight and we know a big chunk is offline bookings, group, business groups, sports groups.

‘‘If we just look at these numbers, we’re gonna have one allocation of 3000 rooms spread out over a period until end of December, it’s like 25 rooms a day on average.

‘‘That means basically 25 people or so a day arriving back to New Zealand, which is pretty small compared to our prepandemic average of 18,000k per day. The whole thing seems very rushed.’’

The new MIQ lobby homepage is allocation.miq.govt.nz/portal/

It’s luck of the draw, so anyone who has real hardship could miss out. Tekla Kridle