The Covid-19 vaccine rollout for Canterbury is under close scrutiny after the district health board admitted it won't be getting started on Group four until mid-September.
The DHB expects to have finished group 3 by the middle of September. Photo: AFP
It was already well behind on the plan for group 3 which includes the over 65s - RNZ revealed in May that injections for those people wouldn't be starting until July, two months behind the national plan.
The Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has told the district health board to stick to the government's timeframe, but that doesn't look likely to happen.
Simon Templeton from Age Concern in Canterbury has been asking local health officials for some assurance about the rollout.
The latest figures show just over 100,000 people have been vaccinated in the region.
He met DHB leaders yesterday and was happy with what he heard about the plan for those over 65.
Templeton said most Cantabrians in group 3 had been contacted and told that, by the end of July, they will be able to book a vaccine appointment.
"A large group of the group 3 people in Canterbury have received a message and they're sending those out via text, via email and via old fashioned letter," he said.
"They're certainly ramping that up to do more and more invites in the coming weeks."
The DHB expects to have finished group 3 by the middle of September, its Covid-19 response senior officer Ralph La Salle has said.
That is when most of group 4 will start getting their injections, although some people will be able to book appointments from 28 July.
The DHB is insisting the immunisation delivery is on track.
In Christchurch central, one older couple have already had their first Pfizer jab - but that's because they live in Auckland.
The couple, in their 70s, said they were due to get their second dose before the end of July.
They said they were glad they did not live in Canterbury - and the DHB seemed to be "utterly hopeless" in its immunisation efforts.
Two teenagers on holiday from Whanganui told RNZ they were expecting to get vaccinated some time next term - which means they could be fully protected from the virus before many much older people in Canterbury are.
National's Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop said it was a shambles.
"We've got this very bizarre situation where the South Canterbury DHB, which has about a 10th of the population of the Canterbury DHB, has actually given more first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to people in Group 3," he said.
"It's very, very strange."
Bishop said group 3 vaccinations should be well underway nationwide by now - and it sounded like they had barely begun in Canterbury.
"If you look up in Auckland, for example, they've done about 55,000 group 3 vaccination first doses and in Canterbury, just 5,500 - so 10 percent of the number," he said.
"If you look down the list, Lakes DHB's done more [vaccinations], Hawke's Bay DHB's done more, Northland DHB's done more.
"Southern DHB has done nearly three times the number of group 3 first vaccinations, compared to Canterbury, so something has clearly gone wrong."
Bishop said the Ministry of Health and the Canterbury DHB needed to say what was going on.