Friday 5: 22 October 2021

Kia ora koutou,

Join us in celebrating the week that was, in this week’s Special edition of Super Saturday Friday 5:

1. Super Saturday went ahead on 16th October and was the highest single day for the programme so far with 40,641 doses administered in Tāmaki Makaurau and of this 22% were first doses! Just under 12% of all doses were Māori and approximately 40% were first doses. Our Pacific community received just over 21% of all doses

2. On Super Saturday there was a total of 260 sites live across Tāmaki Makaurau! A huge Pai te mahi to all our front line workers at the sites who rallied their communities to come down and get vaccinated on Saturday. Thank you to everyone involved from costumes, scooping ice-creams, doing pūkana and haka, singing, dancing and generally making a whole lot of hoorah to encourage the busy or hesitant to get their first jabs, and the halfway theres to get their second!

3. Air New Zealand transformed one of its Boeing 787 Dreamline jets into a vaccine clinic and offered the opportunity for 300 people to get vaccinated in business class aboard Jab-a-Seat!

4. The Rapid Relief Team stepped up to support our Sites Nationwide on Super Saturday and in Auckland alone handed out 3,240 water bottles and sizzled 3,700 sausages! Kia ora to our Rapid Relief Colleagues!

5. We had our first Nationwide Vaxathon event! Where Aotearoa had a target of 100,000 doses but a total of 130,002 doses were administered on the day. This hit an international record; per capita and our 124,117 figure makes our best vaccination day better than those in Australia, the UK, the US or Canada. We now have 85% of New Zealanders with their first dose and 65% are fully vaccinated.

Just to top off our Friday Five, here is some wonderful feedback from one of our General Practices:

Alliance Health Plus has a network of 40 practices with an enrolled population of 119,925 that includes 42% Pacific and Maori. A number of the practices are small and not yet able to provide Covid vaccinations to their patients. To support these practices, the AH+ team have developed a process to deliver Pop-up Vaccination Clinics at non-vaccinating practices. On Super Saturday the team came together and delivered its second Pop-up Vaccination Clinic at Dr Magan’s Surgery in the heart of Mangere, following an initial Pop-up at the same practice 6 weeks ago, delivering first doses. Over the three-day clinic, with a small, efficient team, 289 vaccinations were given – 125 on Super Saturday. 80% of the patients vaccinated were Pacific!

Today we say haere ra to one of our Clinical Leads at the Epsom Site, Tom Robinson. Thank you for all your valuable and contributing efforts to the Vaccination programme!

Have a lovely long weekend everyone and a well deserved rest!

Ngā mihi

The Vaxx team