This course was a temporary pathway for eligible and interested provisionally authorised vaccinators to become fully authorised vaccinators.

Auckland Regional Public Health Service has ordered Auckland's Albany Senior High School to temporarily close under the Health Act while health authorities investigate a potential measles case.

Loretta Roberts, National Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC) responds to the Immunisation Taskforce report Initial Priorities for the National Immunisation Programme in Aotearoa (the report).

Immunisation Handbook v22 published! Summary of changes.

If you wish to become a fully authorised vaccinator after the closing of the Provisional Vaccinator Update Course or your Provisional Authorised Vaccinator certificate has expired, you can become part of the immunisation workforce via the Vaccinator Foundation Course pathway.

The mpox vaccine continues to be available in New Zealand. Administration method has now changed to 'subcutaneous administration only'. People who are concerned they may have or are at risk of exposure to mpox, should complete an initial assessment on: https://www.burnettfoundation.org.nz or call the mpox Healthline: 0800 116 672 (between 8am and 8pm).

Pertussis vaccinations are free and so important for hapū mama and young children.

Resettled refugee children in New Zealand are not fully immunised for measles, mumps and rubella for a variety of reasons. Study by Nadia A. Charania, Janine Paynter, and Nikki Turner published in the Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific 2023;33: 100709.

Quick answers to key questions

A review of literature by Mary Nowlan and Mika Hiroi for IMAC

Comirnaty grey cap vaccines start 1 March 2023

MenB (Bexsero) will be funded for immunisations from 1 March 2023.

Guidance on cold chain depending on access to vaccines.

See the latest version of the Immunisation Handbook on the Manatu Ora website at https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/immunisation-handbook-2020.

Measles is highly infectious and causes severe illness but vaccination is easy and free.

Measles is here so you'll need to access our resources.

Comirnaty (3mcg) 6m-4y maroon cap vaccine is now available for children at high risk of COVID.

Bexsero, MenB vaccine is to be funded from 1 March 2023

A summary of IMAC's evidence review of Bexsero/MenB vaccine.

Body of evidence shows bivalent COVID booster is better than mono.

The Immunisation Advisory Centre is advertising a new role for a Programme Finance Administrator

Vaccination has been found to reduce preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth in a New Zealand study published and promoted by the highly reputable Centre for Disease Control today.

The Vaccinating Health Worker Stage 1 Training is now available for enrolment. Please see here for more information.

Most tamariki are at much lower risk of severe COVID than older age groups, and it's more important to be fully up to date with MMR and all routine childhood immunisations.

In Dr Ashley Bloomfield's final press conference yesterday he shared some critical information on vaccination versus deaths:

Child immunisations have dropped so far during COVID that the World Health Organisation and UNICEF are raising the alarm, as is the Immunisation Advisory Centre, IMAC. Internationally 25 million children have missed out on life-saving vaccinations and here in New Zealand Aotearoa we are seeing a similarly concerning trend

A position paper from the Immunisation Advisory Centre: Professor (Hon) Nikki Turner, Professor Peter McIntyre, Dr Joan Ingram, Dr Emma Best, Dr Edwin Reynolds, Dr Liz Wilson.

There has been much discussion about the fall in childhood immunisation coverage. It is clear that this has happened through COVID-19, but what many don’t realise is that a decline started in 2016.‍

All authorised vaccinators are required to attend an update course every two years. Some Provisional Authorised Vaccinators are approaching two years since they completed their Provisional Vaccinator Foundation Course in 2020 and due to an administrative change their authorisation does not expire until 2023.

IMAC Medical Advisor Joan Ingram has written an article for GP Pulse on the importance of getting vaccinations up to date, especially for children born in the last 5 years and those who've missed out in the 18-32-year-old age group.

Approved for 18y and olderNuvaxovid, the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, has now been approved to be used as a primary vaccination course for people aged 18 and older in Aotearoa. (Pfizer continues to be the preferred vaccine.)

The Ministry of Health has excellent data sets that are updated either daily or weekly and can be looked at by ethnicity, age and geography. You can see which areas and ages are getting vaccinated, have had boosters and which groups or areas may need assistance to lift their vaccination rates.

We recommend that children have two doses of the vaccine 8 weeks apart because it offers:

We all know that getting vaccinated protects us against getting sick, especially from getting very sick. But what you may not know is quite how important it is in preventing us from getting Long COVID.

IMAC will have support services available during the holiday period (24th December to 7th January). Please view the attached resource for more information.

This is a news story, not clinical advice. It relates to the delta period only. A 26 year old male in New Zealand has died with myocarditis following vaccination with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

Comment from Professor Nikki Turner, Medical Director, Immunisation Advisory Centre.

Kate Marshall, a COVID Immunisation Education Facilitator for the Southern Region facilitated this kōrero, sharing her knowledge and answering questions in the safe and supportive environment that English Language Partners has grown.

Helping people who are mandated to get vaccinated is important work.

Children do get COVID-19, and we have seen much higher rates of COVID infection in children in 2021 in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) than in 2020. However, less than two in one hundred children in the 5-11 year age group will have more than mild symptoms needing hospitalisation.

Medsafe has approved booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine for people aged 18 and older. The booster will be a single dose at least six months after a person completed their primary course of two doses.

A new COVID-19 vaccination exemptions process has now been announced by the Ministry of Health.

Medsafe has now renewed the provisional approval for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for 2 years, until 3 November 2023. Provisional Consent renewal is routine and has been applied previously to other medicines.

On Monday 4th of October, we had the first national pilot of the face-to-face Immunisation support worker training.

There isn’t a dress code for COVID-19 vaccination clinics, but ask a vaccinator and chances are they will have stories about people who have turned up to get their dose and they’re not wearing ideal clothes. How can that be?

With all the talk about COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, chances are you’ve also seen many images of needles going into arms – the classic visual representation of immunisation.

As more people are coming through the doors of vaccine centres, so too are the range of individual circumstances and the queries we are seeing at the Immunisation Advisory Centre to confirm eligibility.

There has been considerable confusion in the media, and also in some health professional circles, about which people cannot have COVID-19 vaccines.

As New Zealand went into COVID-19 lockdown in August 2021, the demand for COVID-19 vaccines and ongoing preparation of the workforce to deliver them soared.

Last month’s mass COVID-19 vaccine drive-thru clinic at Sky Stadium saw Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC) staff work alongside the wider health workforce to vaccinate Wellington’s population.

As part of the Polynesian Health Corridors programme, a five-year programme led by the Ministry of Health to strengthen existing linkages between the New Zealand and Polynesian health systems, the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC) has been contracted to provide expert advice

All the vaccines on the National Immunisation Schedule can now be given concurrently, immediately before or after the mRNA-COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, with the exception of the shingles vaccine (Zostavax). This includes MMR, influenza, HPV (Gardasil 9), tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (Boostrix) and the meningococcal vaccines (Bexsero and Menactra).

In Alert Level 4, it is important that general practices and outreach services across the country continue delivering essential health services, including on-time delivery of the childhood immunisation schedule vaccines.‍

We had a chat with Midlands COVID-19 Regional Immunisation Advisor Olivia Haslam to learn more about her and the work she does in her region. She also shares some more details about her background as a pharmacist vaccinator.

The Government has today announced a change in post-vaccination observation period. It is now a minimum of 15 minutes instead of 20 minutes.

Following Medsafe’s approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds, the Government has now extended eligibility of the COVID-19 vaccination programme to include this age group.

Today the Government announced that new COVID-19 vaccination bookings will default to a three-week (21 day minimum) interval between doses. Those with existing bookings at an interval of six weeks can consider shifting their second dose to an earlier time.

Today the Government announced the COVID-19 vaccination rollout will be adjusted to increase spacing first and second vaccine doses. Bookings will now be at least six weeks apart rather than starting from 21 days.

Dealla Smith, COVID-19 Immunisation Education Facilitator for IMAC, has been clocking up her vaccination experience since the COVID-19 rollout began, working as both an educator and vaccinator.

Dotted across the country are our knowledgeable 0800 advisors manning the phones from 8am – 8pm awaiting your clinical queries. Our advisors have a variety of expertise, ranging from technical writing and practice nursing backgrounds, as well as representing our core IMAC education team, and now our COVID-19 immunisation education facilitators.

What can we make of the latest COVID-19 data from the UK?

The Janssen COVID-19 vaccine now joins the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine with provisional approval from Medsafe in New Zealand. This is welcome news for New Zealand in ensuring we have options for another effective vaccine that also comes with an international excellent safety profile.

As New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccination programme ramps up, Primary Care will have an increasing role in vaccination roll out. It is anticipated more healthcare professionals with prescribing rights will now be likely to administer the vaccine.

It started with a connection made between the Immunisation Advisory Centre’s (IMAC) Pasifika Engagement Advisor Siufofoga Matagi and Whitireia New Zealand’s Bachelor of Nursing Pacific Programme Manager Tania Mullane.

All New Zealanders can have confidence in the safety and efficacy of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and Medsafe’s provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech for 12- to-15-year-olds adds weight to this confidence.

The Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC) has been working alongside Māori Health Providers and DHBs in the North Island to prepare and educate the workforce for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Here we take a look at efforts by the Northern DHB to educate Kaimahi Māori workforce as well as Turanga Health’s model of vaccination delivery in Tairawhiti.

The Immunisation Advisory Centre’s (IMAC) Pasifika Engagement Advisor Siufofoga Matagi is conscious of the need to support more Pasifika vaccinators into the COVID-19 vaccinator workforce.

Following approval by Medsafe, the storage conditions have changed for all batches of Comirnaty (COVID-19 mRNA vaccine) available in New Zealand.

This week the Ministry of Health announced it has commissioned the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), to develop a new training and assurance programme to create a skilled pool of supervised Vaccinator Assistants who will work within a vaccination team in Covid-19 vaccination centres.

On Thursday 6 May Te Puna Ora o Mataatua and the Immunisation Advisory Centre came together for a bespoke education session in preparation for the wider COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Whakatane.

Representatives from the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC) are heading to the Cook Islands to support the nation’s roll out of their COVID-19 vaccination programme, as New Zealand and the Cook Islands prepare for a two-way travel bubble to launch on 17 May.

We are pleased to share that access to our online COVID-19 vaccine courses is now open and free, without the need for a user to first enter a package code.

By Nikki Turner, Immunisation Advisory Centre Clinical Director

Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall checked out the University of Auckland’s Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), operated by UniServices on the Grafton campus, which will train and support the nation’s vaccinators and health workforce for the COVID-19 immunisation programme.

On 31 March 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech released top-line data from their phase 3 clinical trial showing 100% efficacy against COVID-19 in teenagers aged 12–15 years old following vaccination with Comirnaty™. A robust antibody response and tolerable side effects were consistent with those seen in adults aged 16–25.

Recent research adds to alarm bells that pregnant people are not getting vaccinated in big enough numbers. Pregnancy puts you at greater risk of disease making vaccination even more important for both you and your baby.

Women’s voices, women’s approach and women’s thinking should be visible in every level of our society. Too often they’re not and the results are frustrating.

Opinion: In less than a year, the world has a number of available licensed Covid-19 vaccines – this is incredible progress. Nikki Turner summarises how it was done.

The Ministry of Health has contracted the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), operated by UniServices and based at the University of Auckland, to provide education and support to all health professionals and allied workforces across New Zealand during the rollout of the COVID-19 immunisation programme.

GP and Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, Dr Nikki Turner, is taking us along on her COVID-19 vaccine journey. Over the next few weeks she will be capturing her experiences from her first vaccine through to her second dose for the Ministry of Health.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccince Vaxzevria is no longer be available in New Zealand. Supplies are now expired (as of 5 September).