After breaking records in recent days, the Covid-19 vaccination effort is using up the country’s stockpile of jabs quickly, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

The Covid-19 vaccination programme faces the perils of success. After hitting records in recent days with the brakes taken off the vaccine effort, a possible slowdown now looms. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic. There are about 840,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine currently in the country, with new deliveries adding over 300,000 a week. However New Zealand is currently administering about 525,000 doses a week.

The actual maths is a little more difficult. There are questions about how many doses are actually in storage. The number of doses in the delivery pipeline is fluctuating and daily usage is highly variable and increasing. While the crucial date is unclear, the programme could face a serious challenge within weeks unless something changes. The government won’t want to let storage dwindle to zero before acting.

We got here attempting to avoid a delta outbreak. The possible slowdown is partly a reflection of a decision made only days before the delta outbreak was detected to aggressively expand the vaccine programme. For example, someone in their 30s could now get a first dose months earlier than once planned. The rules were also changed to double the gap between jabs as a way of increasing first doses.

The government is trying to secure more doses. While the Beehive is sharing few details, it’s working on a plan to keep the programme going at white-hot levels. More than 90,000 doses were delivered on Friday alone. As Thomas Coughlan reported in the NZ Herald, the options right now include asking Pfizer for earlier shipments or “swapping” jabs with other countries, which could include expanding the programme beyond the Pfizer vaccine. Medsafe has approved the Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines for use.

We wouldn’t be the first to buy from other countries. While the government’s preference would be to take doses from other countries now and replace them later in a swap, it could also buy them. Australia bought one million doses of vaccine from Poland earlier this month. Stuff reports that the prime minister’s office is nearing a deal to buy jabs from other countries, but Jacinda Ardern is keeping the details close.

The alternative is a slowdown. The prime minister said yesterday that the programme will “manage demand” if efforts to secure more doses fail. Which means vaccinators will deliver only about 350,000 doses weekly, matching the number of new jabs arriving in the country. Responding to questions on Monday, Ardern promised there “won’t be a shortage”. Speaking with RNZ later, Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins said existing bookings won’t be cancelled, but drive-thru and walk-up locations may close. He also said a rationed programme could deliver up to 65,000 doses a day, or 455,000 a week. It’s unclear why he and the prime minister have different numbers.

It’s possible the government delayed deliveries. NewstalkZB has reported that Hipkins may have asked Pfizer several months ago to delay deliveries until October so “we don’t end up with a whole lot sitting in the freezer”. Speaking with RNZ, Hipkins said he had made no such request. He also revealed that the vaccine programme now expects it’ll get four million doses in October, so if it can get through September, it shouldn’t need to worry about shortages. The minister also admitted yesterday morning to Stuff that he’d told reporters months ago that those doses were coming in September, but he got the month wrong.

Could Auckland be a priority for doses? If the government needs to slow the vaccine programme, Ardern said it’ll see if it can keep the volume of doses up in Auckland as the city remains in level four lockdown. However, no promises were made. The government is expecting to announce later this week whether a deal was struck.

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With cases active in the community and essential workers testing positive for Covid-19, there are signs the virus is spreading in lockdown, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

We’re getting into the critical numbers of the delta outbreak. Each of the 511 cases detected in New Zealand so far has the potential to be a personal tragedy, however some infections are more threatening to the community than others. Of the 82 cases reported on Saturday, 25 had been active in the community during lockdown while infectious, according to director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield. That’s about 30% of cases.

“They are generating new exposure events and only some of those may become locations of interest in the community. They may be exposure events where they were dropping something to a friend and it was done contactlessly,” Bloomfield told me yesterday. It’s one of a number of warning signs over the weekend.

Infections are now spreading at work during lockdown. While half of all new cases are believed to be a result of transmission within a household, the government now has evidence that essential workers are catching the virus from each other at four work sites. As many as 87 essential workers have now become infected. It’s a finding that could extend how long lockdown lasts. As reported by TVNZ, the prime minister is now considering a level four-plus lockdown, with new restrictions around how essential workers can socialise on the job.

None of the new cases are believed to have broken level four rules.

Another important new number: 0.8. Level four lockdown has reduced the reproduction rate for Covid-19 from about six to 0.8, Bloomfield said yesterday. That means 10 people infected with the virus would now pass it on to eight. Before lockdown, they would have passed it on to 60 people. That R rate still needs to be brought down much lower, Bloomfield added. When the number falls below one, the virus will eventually be stamped out, But at 0.8 it could take some time. It’s a testament to how infectious the delta variant is that what’s been described as the world’s most stringent lockdown has moved us only a smidge below that important line.

Case numbers may finally have peaked. Maybe. They were initially expected to peak last Wednesday or Thursday, according to the government’s modelling but the weekend added over 160 new cases to the national tally. It’s possible the daily number has finally peaked, but it will remain “highish” for days to come, Bloomfield warned. As Stuff reports, the steadily increasing numbers have some uncomfortable parallels to the New South Wales outbreak. Cases spreading through essential workers is how NSW became home to Australia’s worst outbreak, along with some very questionable choices by the premier.

What this means for lockdown. The possibility that workers are unknowingly spreading the virus between themselves and infecting their families, creating new chains of transmission, is chilling. The Sydney outbreak didn’t just grow to over 1,000 daily cases in a straight line, it grew and stalled and grew again, as the virus found new fissures in an admittedly weaker lockdown to exploit. With New Zealand’s daily tally defying expectations that cases would now be falling, modellers warn that Auckland’s lockdown may need to last weeks longer than even last week’s predictions.

Cabinet will be looking at Auckland’s situation today with the prime minister updating the country at 4pm.

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