Pfizer Vaccine: Approximately 250,000 doses to arrive in New Zealand from Spain tomorrow Friday

About 250,000 doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for the coronavirus bought by Wellington from Madrid will arrive in New Zealand within a week, the Prime Minister of Oceania Jacinda Ardern, in order to speed up the immunization program.

The installments will arrive in Auckland from Spain tomorrow Friday, Ms. Ardern clarified. They will be added to the approximately 1.8 million installments delivered directly by Pfizer this month in New Zealand.

“We have no intention of slowing down” the immunization campaign, the New Zealand Prime Minister assured during a press conference.

Ms Ardern’s government wants to expand vaccination of the population to overcome the current outbreak of the pandemic, which is attributed to the most contagious Delta variant, and forced it to impose a nationwide lockdown in August.

The measures have since eased in the country, but in Auckland, 1.7 million inhabitants are subject to strict measures.

At this stage, about 31% of New Zealand’s population (a total of 5.1 million) has been vaccinated, according to AMPE. This is one of the slowest immunization campaigns in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Authorities today announced 13 cases of SARS-CoV-2, all in Auckland. In the current outbreak, 868 infections with the virus have been confirmed.

The measures taken by the government – the closing of the borders and the enforcement lockdowns in the country when outbreaks have been detected since March 2020 – allowed New Zealand to keep the spread of the virus under control. The country has been virtually free of pandemics for months this year.