Friday 5: 4 February 2022

Kia ora koutou,

Join us in celebrating the week that was, in this week’s Friday 5:

1. In preparation for the Omicron Surge the vaccination programme has been converting some of our fixed vaccination sites to accommodate drive-throughs. As apart of this rollout, on Tuesday 1st Feb the Mount Wellington site switched to a drive-through! This will better serve us to work with the covid red level restrictions as well as handle the forecasted demand increase for vaccinations. Thank you to everyone across all departments who have worked together in our omicron response preparedness planning! To date our Mount Wellington site has administered 170,661 doses

2. Launching today, Auckland DHB now has a new site in the CBD, The Cloud! People who live and work in Auckland’s inner city will, from tomorrow, be able to walk into the newest pop-up vaccination centre on Queens Wharf. The well-known convention centre will operate as a vaccination centre for the next five weeks, with the capacity initially to vaccinate around 500 people per day. Prime minister, Jacinda Ardern visited the site today to officially open the site!

3. Papakura Marae is hosting two amazing Kaupapa for our tamariki, in partnership with Got Ya Dot and Counties Manukau Health. Nga mihi kia koutou katoa! Monday is Whaanau Fun Day for the entire whanau to enjoy. Kai, fun, good music, and a few fairies and superheroes might make an appearance! Ka pai to our Māori Provider Partners and CMDHB colleagues for pulling this all together.

4. The Government announced on Wednesday 2 February that the interval gap would be reduced from 4-months to a 3-month interval. The new interval change was implemented today, Friday 4 February and applies to all eligible people aged 18 years and over. The booster roll out has been accelerated as one of the several measures to protect Aotearoa against the new variant Omicron to date we have administered 496,000 booster doses!

5. Fantastic work done by the Aged Residential care services as they continue their booster rollout which was completed last week and was led by pharmacy providers and supported by the NRHCC outreach service. Across all 3 DHBs, we have near 100% percent response rate from the facilities, with more than 96%, 99%, and 94% (ADHB, CMDHB, WDHB respectively) of eligible ARC residents have received their booster doses, a total of 7,752 ARC residents.

And finally, some wonderful feedback from Ngaati Whatua in our Tamaki centre:

"Overall our 5-11yr old soft launch went really well, the kids area was a hit (with both kids and particularly dads) and all parents said it was an easy process and enjoyable. We completed 50 kids vax alongside boosters and 2 first timers, great outcome.

We had a few difficult children, but the team did an awesome job and able to vaccinate everyone, and even with Anthony Jordan supporting the process for 1 young man.

We would be happy to support or provide feedback to other providers"

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Ngā mihi

The Vaxx team