Current Events > Finally booked in for the vaccine.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Eligibility finally opened up for people my age in NZ today. Soonest appointment I could get was two weeks from today, which is annoying, but it'll do. Booked the second one for 8 weeks later; NZ's official advice is 6 weeks but from what I can gather international research suggests 8 weeks is the optimal gap so I went for that.

Here's hoping they don't suspend the vaccine rollout again like they did last week (due to a move into lockdown); although realistically, I don't think they will again at this point - they're now operating it under our strictest level of lockdown restrictions, so unless they need to bring in an even-higher level of restrictions, I don't see them needing to shut it down again.

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Why has it been so slow out there and Australia?

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VipaGTS posted...

Why has it been so slow out there and Australia?

I don't know the specifics of Australia, but in NZ, basically - the government secured pre-order agreements very quickly, but delayed actually ordering shipments to start until late-January. On top of this, a bit into the year they decided to disregard the various other preorders and go all-in on Pfizer (initial Pfizer order would've been enough for about 10% of our population), ordering more of it - at the back of the queue at this point - meaning we literally didn't have sufficient supply until very recently to start rolling it out en masse. By this point, we have approval for J&J and AstraZeneca too, both of which we had preorders in place for, though it's not going to make a difference now - it would've if we'd acted on those back at the start, but the only thing they really provide now is an alternative option for people / regions where Pfizer isn't suitable.

Our government (rightly) get a lot of praise for how they handle outbreaks that do pop up, but yeah... the vaccine rollout has been an utter shambles.

The two week delay from eligibility to having an available appointment comes down to limited capacity in the region I'm in, which is somewhat remote - keep in mind that I wasn't eligible to book until today, but other people (in vulnerable groups, or older ages) have been eligible for a while.

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