COVID-19 resources

Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand is working with Manatū Hauora - Ministry of Health, Te Aka Whai Ora - Māori Health Authority, Te Puni Kōkiri - Ministry of Māori Development, and Ministry for Pacific Peoples to raise awareness that free antiviral medicines are available to people who are at risk of getting severely ill from COVID-19. We want eligible people to know about antivirals before they get sick, so they can get the medicines quickly if needed, and that the medicines are available directly through many pharmacies. We’re emphasising that people should stay home and isolate if they feel sick and call their pharmacist or usual healthcare provider for a phone appointment to talk about antivirals.

As our information campaign continues, you may get more questions about antivirals, so we wanted to remind you of key information and provide some useful new resources.

As you’ll be aware, antivirals are free for people eligible under Pharmac’s access criteria, which was expanded in September and now includes: 

• Māori or Pacific people aged 50 years or older 
• everyone aged 65 years and older 

• anyone aged 50 years or older with fewer than two COVID-19 vaccinations 
• anyone with a severely weakened immune system 
• anyone with Down syndrome 
• anyone with sickle cell disease 
• anyone previously in critical or high dependency hospital care from COVID-19 
• anyone with three or more high-risk medical conditions.

To be eligible, a patient must have COVID-19 and be experiencing symptoms, or be a household contact of someone with COVID-19 and be experiencing symptoms. We recently updated our clinical guidance on oral therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19, which you can find on the Te Whatu Ora website. The COVID-19 Health Hub website has information on the criteria and high-risk medical conditions, and is the best place to point the public for Manatū Hauora advice on what to do if you test positive for, or are exposed to, COVID-19.

Pharmacies may get more questions

One of the campaign messages asks people to speak to a local pharmacy about their potential eligibility before becoming unwell, or phone a pharmacy for an assessment if they’ve tested positive, are having symptoms, and think they may be eligible.

If you’re a pharmacy that offers antivirals, we have developed a poster you can display to make people aware. You’ll find a link to this in the table below. If you don’t offer antivirals, either with or without a prescription, a reminder to please use Healthpoint to identify the nearest pharmacy that does and provide the patient with that pharmacy’s information. You may wish to save the following links:

• Pharmacies that provide antivirals without a prescription
• Pharmacies that provide antivirals with a prescription

Resources for pharmacies and general practices
We have developed the following resources for you to display, use or share as you see fit – with your patients and the local community.

Note: Most of these resources are available from the Unite Against COVID-19 online resource toolkit. If you’ve not used this toolkit before, you’ll need to register first - it's free and only takes a couple of minutes.

Thank you for supporting this rollout of COVID-19 antiviral medicines to people in your communities. We will continue to provide updates and resources as this mahi progresses. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with the COVID-19 Care in the Community team: COVIDCareintheCommunity@health.govt.nz. 

On 17 November 2022 there was an announcement of an extension of eligibility for a second COVID-19 booster to Māori and Pacific peoples aged 40-49 – available from Friday 18 November.

We wanted to also update you that:

• Direct communications - 55k Māori and Pacific people aged 40-49 who met the eligibility criteria for a second booster were sent an email or SMS on 18 November. The content of the communication was to inform them of the change in eligibility of second boosters following last week’s announcement, advising why second boosters are important; and should they wish to, how to book and get vaccinated. Individuals were directed to pharmacies, local Māori or Pacific health providers, and vaccination centres to have their second booster. They were also provided details to call Healthline for information and to book. Following the email / SMS campaign, outreach calls commenced from Monday 21 November, with the automated journeys (email / SMS) being extended shortly – system-generated email/SMS messages delivered automatically when an individual becomes eligible.
• Targeted radio advertising went live from Monday 21 November (focussed on iwi and Pacific radio stations). This is in market till end of next week.
• Updated print collateral is in production and will be available on Dropbox once ready.
• The interactive digital tools on the Unite Against COVID-19 and Karawhiua websites is now live. This interactive eligibility checker that consumers can use can be found at: Check your eligibility.
• The updated Ministry of Health website reflecting this change is found here:  COVID-19 vaccine: Boosters | Ministry of Health NZ

Click here for a link to the latest covid vaccination consent form

Click here for access to the IMAC Screening and Guidance Form

7 Rights Of COVID Vaccine Administration Poster

Vaccination Gaps Poster

www.BookMyVaccine.nz
Who manages it: Ministry of Health
How to make changes: Contact Gina Burney

NIB@bopdhb.govt.nz

www.Healthpoint.co.nz – providers’ listings
Who manages it: Providers manage their own profiles
How to make changes: Provider must change profile themselves

www.Healthpoint.co.nz – Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand Hauora o Toi Bay of Plenty immunisation and pop-up testing sites.
Who manages it: Healthpoint oversees this site, and Leisa can make some changes to the Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand Hauora o Toi Bay of Plenty immunisation and pop-up testing profiles.

How to make changes: Contact Leisa

www.Karawhiua.nz
Who manages it: Information is pulled from Healthpoint and automatically updates

How to make changes: Contact Leisa  Leisa.Managh@bopdhb.govt.nz

www.COVID19.govt.nz
Who manages it: DPMC and MoH
How to make changes: Content was originally pulled from Healthpoint and uploaded. This content is not a live-feed and does not automatically update when Healthpoint is updated. Only the DPMC web team can manually change content. Contact Leisa who will ask COVID19Web@dpmc.govt.nz

Click here for incorrect vaccination incident toolkit v1 Feb 2022

Latest operating guidelines 

Clarifying the gap between Covid vaccine boosters
We’ve had requests for clarification around the gap between first and second boosters. Please share the following advice with your vaccinators:

To ensure the correct gap between first and second boosters, in line with the Director General’s Epidemic Notice, we have set the Book My Vaccine gap at 185 days. This allows for differences in the number of days in a month and for a day zero. The detecting failsafe is set at <180 days. If someone presents for their second booster at 179 days or earlier please talk to them about why they are presenting early. If there are accessibility, equity or clinical reasons, it may be appropriate to vaccinate them early and we do want to facilitate this when it is needed.  

Ideally, in these situations you will first obtain a prescription, and many vaccinators have access to a prescriber (ask your provider if you are unsure). If this isn’t easily obtained, you can seek clinical advice from IMAC to help your decision making. Any early vaccination needs to have the risks clearly explained to the consumer and noted in the CIR. A failsafe warning is triggered whenever a person receives their second booster 179 days or earlier. Your notes help your District’s Quality Team assess the failsafe information and decide whether an incident has occurred or not.

Gap between Pfizer boosters
To help those at the frontline explain the gap between Pfizer doses, we’ve created a downloadable A3 poster that can be used in primary care settings. You can access the ‘Pfizer vaccination flowchart’ poster here.

COVID-19 second booster direct communications work
Following previous success with our personalised direct communications to eligible people encouraging them to get vaccinated, we are continuing with our second booster campaign. From Thursday 28 July, we sent email and text messages to ~10-20k newly eligible people encouraging them to visit BookMyVaccine to find a walk-in vaccination site or to book an appointment.

The Ministry of Health has confirmed the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine can be administered at the same time, before or after most vaccines – with the exception of the Zostavax (Shingles) vaccine which needs a gap of seven days

Please note that COVID-19 vaccines still need to be recorded in the CIR and any other vaccines continue to be recorded in the NIR/PMS. The Ministry of Health is working on consolidating these systems into the new National Immunisation Solution and will update you soon on the timeframe for that work.

There have been reports of flecks or floating debris in the vaccine vial or noticed in the syringe.

Any instance of this should see the vial or all syringes from the vial isolated, and an incident report done. A photo of the vial or syringe should be taken and attached to the incident report.

If you are unsure if it’s a problem: isolate the vial but keep it in the cold chain and contact your IMAC representative to discuss.

If it is clearly floating debris, take pictures first before disposing of the vial. Please ensure images are clear enough to see the debris. Wasted vials should be recorded as usual.

This issue has been escalated to Pfizer.