(Reuters) – New Zealand began rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine at Pfizer-BioNTech on Saturday, and Australia finalized plans to begin inoculations on Monday, a new milestone in tackling the virus that two countries largely held.
A small group of medical professionals was brought in Friday in Auckland ahead of the wider deployment that officially began with border and Remote Administration and Quarantine (MIQ) staff on Saturday, officials said. .
In Australia, quarantine hotel and healthcare workers are also the first group to be admitted at 16 Pfizer vaccine hubs across the country, along with veterans of age-old care facilities.
“Today, we begin the largest vaccination program in our history, with the first vaccination of our frontier workers, a vital step in protecting all man in Aotearoa, ”New Zealand health minister Ashley Bloomfield told reporters in Auckland, using the country’s native Maori name. .
“We move through those first days and weeks in a measured way to ensure that our systems and processes are robust. ”
New Zealand is expected to roll out nationwide covering the country’s population of 5 million taking a full year, with Australia aiming to bring in its 25 million citizens by October.
New COVID-19 infections have not been reported in communities of all countries in the previous 24 hours despite tens of thousands of tests, officials said.
The two countries ended up locking up local locks this week after a group came out of a quarantine hotel in Melbourne and as New Zealand authorities investigate how a snoring between a highly dislocated UK variant was found in three members of the Auckland family.
Both countries are among the top 10 worldwide in the COVID-19 performance record for the successful treatment of pandemic.
Australia has recorded just under 29,000 cases and 909 deaths, while New Zealand has recorded just 26 deaths from 2,350 cases.
Reporting with Paulina Duran in Sydney; Edited by Lincoln Feast.