Requirements to administer COVID-19 vaccines 

To administer COVID-19 vaccines, you first need to complete the appropriate COVID-19 vaccinator education. The choice of COVID-19 vaccinator education is dependent on whether you are:

• a regulated healthcare professional eg, holding a valid New Zealand annual practicing certificate, or
• an unregulated healthcare worker (see Vaccinating health worker: Stage 1 - Core). 

Regulated healthcare professionals

This group includes registered healthcare professionals with prescribing rights, fully authorised vaccinators, pharmacist vaccinators, intern pharmacist vaccinators, provisionally authorised vaccinators, provisional pharmacist vaccinators and provisional intern pharmacist vaccinators. 

There are currently three COVID-19 vaccine education courses:

• COVID-19 Vaccine core education: Comirnaty grey cap vaccines (ages 12+ yrs)
• COVID-19 vaccine (ages 5-11 yrs) Comirnaty (Pfizer/BioNTech)
• COVID-19 Vaccine Nuvaxovid (Novavax)
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The COVID-19 Vaccine core education: Comirnaty grey cap vaccines (ages 12+ yrs) is regarded as the foundation COVID-19 vaccinator education course.  It is mandatory that you complete this course before completing other COVID-19 vaccine courses, which are optional.  On completion of the relevant courses, you can administer the associated vaccine to the appropriate population.

Note: COVID-19 Vaccinator Education Course AstraZeneca was discontinued September 2022 following the announcement by Te Whatu Ora of the discontinuation of AstraZeneca in Aotearoa.  

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Unregulated healthcare professionals

This group includes pharmacy technicians, kaiāwhina, kaiārahi, Kaimanaaki, pharmacy technicians, healthcare assistants and healthcare practitioners without a valid NZ annual practising certificate eg, retired NZ trained practitioners or practitioners trained overseas. 

The vaccinating health worker education programme is the current education suite for unregulated healthcare professionals to administer vaccines.