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.

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The current COVID-19 education course is called the Aotearoa NZ COVID-19 Vaccinator.

The course covers the content below:

1. COVID-19 infection
2. Comirnaty 30mcg and 15/15mcg grey cap vaccines
3. Comirnaty 10mcg orange cap vaccine
4. Comirnaty 3mcg maroon cap vaccine
5. Nuvaxovid, recombinant COVID-19 vaccine
6. Practical aspects and cold chain

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.