(Reuters) – New Zealand began official deployment of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday, while Australia finalized plans to begin inoculations on Monday, a new phase to fight the virus that both countries have maintained in largely content.
A small group of medical professionals were injected into Auckland on Friday before the wider deployment that officially began with border staff and so-called managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers on Saturday, officials said.
In Australia, hotel quarantine and health workers will also be the first cohort to be inoculated at 16 Pfizer vaccination centers across the country, along with older Australians in senior care centers.
“Today we are launching the largest vaccination program in our history, vaccinating the first frontier staff, a critical step to protect everyone in Aotearoa,” New Zealand Health Minister Ashley Bloomfield told Auckland reporters. with the Maori indigenous name of the country. .
“We will spend these first few days and weeks in a measured way to make sure our systems and processes are sound.”
New Zealand expects its national deployment, with a population of 5 million, to take a full year, while Australia aims to inoculate its 25 million citizens in October.
No new COVID-19 infections were reported in communities in any country in the previous 24 hours despite tens of thousands of tests, officials said.
Both nations ended local closures quickly this week after a group left a quarantine hotel in Melbourne and as New Zealand authorities investigated how a variety of a highly transmissible UK variant was found in three members of an Auckland family.
The two countries rank in the top ten globally in a COVID-19 performance index for their success in handling the pandemic.
Australia has recorded just under 29,000 cases and 909 deaths, while New Zealand has recorded just 26 deaths per 2,350 cases.
Paulina Duran’s report in Sydney; Lincoln Feast Edition.