“New Zealand’s advance purchase agreement with Pfizer was signed on 12 October and it was the first vaccine agreement we signed. The Government should’ve then immediately ordered as many doses as possible and moved as quickly as possible to approve the vaccine use in New Zealand,” Bishop says.
“Pfizer was approved in the UK on December 2 and at the time it was approved in New Zealand on February 3, it had been approved in more than 50 countries.”
But Hipkins says the first batch was just the starting point, and since then, the delivery orders have been ramping up. Earlier this week, for example, Pfizer delivered more than 370,000 doses – the largest to date.
“It’s all around a negotiated quantity with the vaccination provider, with the manufacturer… that we will take delivery of this quantity at this given date,” Hipkins told reporters on Wednesday.
“We weren’t able to put in an order for that first delivery until we knew that we were getting Medsafe approval. Once we were confident of that, a few days before that, we got the order in so that we could take the delivery fairly soon after the approval was officially given.
“We weren’t able to put in an order for that first delivery until we knew that we were getting Medsafe approval.”
