(Reuters) – New Zealand began the official launch of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday, while Australia finalized plans to start inoculations on Monday, a new phase in fighting the virus that the two countries maintained. widely contained.
A small group of medical professionals was injected on Friday in Auckland, before the broader launch, which was officially starting with the border team and so-called managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers on Saturday, officials said.
In Australia, quarantine of hotels and healthcare professionals will also be the first group to be inoculated at 16 Pfizer vaccination centers across the country, alongside older Australians in senior care centers.
“Today, we begin the largest immunization program in our history, vaccinating the first of our border workforce, a critical step in protecting everyone in Aotearoa,” New Zealand Health Minister Ashley Bloomfield told reporters in Auckland, using the country’s Maori name.
“We will be going through those first days and weeks in a measured way to ensure that our systems and processes are sound.”
New Zealand expects its nationwide rollout, covering the country’s 5 million population, to take an entire year, while Australia plans to inoculate its 25 million citizens by October.
No new COVID-19 infections have been reported in communities in either country in the past 24 hours, despite tens of thousands of tests, officials said.
Both nations ended the sudden local blockades this week after a cluster emerged from a quarantine hotel in Melbourne and while New Zealand authorities were investigating how a strain of a highly transmissible British variant was found in three members of an Auckland family.
The two countries are in the top 10 globally on a COVID-19 performance index for their successful treatment of the pandemic.
Australia recorded just under 29,000 cases and 909 deaths, while New Zealand recorded only 26 deaths out of 2,350 cases.
Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Lincoln Feast edition.