Most of New Zealand’s healthcare workers and teachers would soon be legally required to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the government announced yesterday.
A new mandate compels doctors, pharmacists, community nurses and many other healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated by December. Teachers and other education workers must be fully vaccinated by January next year.
Many in those professions had already gotten their jabs, but they could not leave anything to chance, especially because those people deal with sick patients and young children who are not yet approved for the vaccine themselves, New Zealand Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins said.
Photo: AP
“It’s not an easy decision, but we need the people who work with vulnerable communities who haven’t yet been vaccinated to take this extra step,” Hipkins said.
New Zealand already requires many people who work at the border to be vaccinated.
The announcement comes as New Zealand battles an outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in its largest city, Auckland.
SUPPORT
The initial responses from groups representing affected workers were in favor of the mandate.
“Given the speed at which Delta is spreading throughout our country, this is a bold, but necessary call to make,” said Samantha Murton, president of The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday said that Auckland would stay in lockdown for at least another week, while the nearby regions of Waikato and Northland could come out of lockdown on Thursday if no significant spread of the virus was found in those places.
Auckland has been in lockdown for nearly two months, since the outbreak was discovered. Thirty-five new local cases were found in the city yesterday, bringing the total number of cases in the outbreak to a little more than 1,600.
Last week, Ardern acknowledged that the virus was in New Zealand to stay, and it would not be completely wiped out by measures including lockdowns and contact tracing, which had succeeded in eliminating previous outbreaks.
Ardern has been urging people to get vaccinated as a step toward the nation reopening.
‘SUPER SATURDAY’
This coming weekend, the government is planning a “Super Saturday” vaccination drive that it likens to an election day, when vaccination centers would be open throughout the day and into the evening.
About 68 percent of New Zealanders have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 47 percent are fully vaccinated. Among those aged 12 and over, the figures rise to 82 percent and 57 percent respectively.
The government yesterday also announced an advance purchase agreement for 60,000 courses of an experimental new pill by drug maker Merck, pending approval by New Zealand regulators.
The pill, molnupiravir, would be the first shown to treat COVID-19, if it is approved by regulators including the US Food and Drug Administration.
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