The Prime Minister has said we would know them by their deeds. Last week I looked at the debacle in housing.
Now we can look at another debacle, this time with flu vaccinations.
TVNZ has now revealed that the Ministry of Health, led by Dr Ashley Bloomfield has misled everyone about the availability of flu vaccinations.
The Ministry of Health is under pressure over whether it misled the New Zealand public about this year’s flu vaccine.
Officials have repeatedly denied there was a shortage, but a six-month investigation by 1 NEWS has uncovered the ministry knew about it – and even warned the Government – despite telling the public a different story.
Ministry of Health emails, released under the Official Information Act, reveal a number of conversations explicitly discussing low stock levels and struggles to fulfil orders.
That includes a Pharmac staff member emailing the ministry saying on April 29: “…have you been briefing the Minister’s office on the flu vaccine stock levels, including that we are very low on stock now until the next delivery?”
“Yes we have been,” the ministry replied.
The next day an email to the ministry said: “I am not sure there will even be enough stock to over last nights’ orders.”
It came as Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield encouraged Kiwis to get the vaccination on April 29, and Finance Minister Grant Robertson assured there was availability on May 1.
However, there were also waves of emails to the ministry from doctors struggling to get their hands on stock.
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The 1 NEWS investigation discovered that at the height of the problem, more than 1000 vaccines were lost – sent to the wrong city – and by the time they were found they were useless.
In a damning letter, the Hutt Valley District Health Board said it was “totally unacceptable” and that someone needed to take responsibility.
It said the lost vaccines “impacted significantly” on practices and were meant for “low decile and extremely vulnerable people”.
So, they lied, then they covered up, and their response to the report was pure flannel:
The Ministry of Health wouldn’t front on camera for 1 NEWS, but in a statement the ministry said it maintained it was a distribution issues and that were was not an overall shortage of the vaccine – despite the emails from the time telling a different story.
And what was Jacinda Ardern, she who never tells lies, saying back in April about the issue:
There was no “debacle” when it came to the distribution of flu vaccines in New Zealand, the Prime Minister says.
NZ Medical Association chair Dr Kate Baddock says while the distribution of vaccines are now working well since the Ministry of Health and DHBs stepped in, it had earlier been a “complete debacle”.
“I don’t want to see what happened with flu, happen with a COVID-19 vaccine,” she told the Epidemic Response Committee on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t mince her words.
“I disagree with them on that,” said Ardern, adding New Zealand’s flu vaccinations campaign started earlier than usual.
“We wanted to be prepared and we have more flu vaccines than we would normally offer as well, so I disagree with that assessment of the flu vaccine. We know we moved early.
“It’s not finished, I should add. That will be a rolling campaign.”
Or what about what she said in May:
The Government has said there’s plenty of supply – about 700,000 vaccine doses are in fridges around the country – but distribution within district health board areas is falling short.
Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning asked Ardern how it was possible to “lose 700,000 flu jabs”.
“We haven’t lost 700,000 flu jabs,” Ardern said. “They are with GP clinics, pharmacies and those medical centres who dispatch them. We’ve actually put out more flu jabs than we have at any time by this point in the season, ever.”
But Hosking said that was “irrelevant … people who wanted flu jabs can’t get them because when they go to the doctor they haven’t got them”.
Ardern said that was “absolutely a misrepresentation”.
Hosking said the medical profession had been saying for weeks they could not get access to flu jabs.
“Grant Robertson said on Friday there are 700,000 out in the community. [Associate health minister Julie Anne Genter] gets rolled out Saturday saying whoops, sorry, we’re not sure exactly where they are and not everyone’s going to get one,” he said.
But Ardern said there had been 1.3 million vaccines distributed to date to DHBs.
“Those DHBs then distribute them across their pharmacies, their GPs. They prioritised the elderly and the vulnerable to make sure that they were vaccinated first, and 451,000 of them have been.”
The remaining vaccines then sat with those GPs and pharmacies. An inventory of every GP in the country found there were 700,000 doses remaining, Ardern said.
“But they then need to be moved around by the head of immunisation at each DHB and we let them do that job,” she said. “If a medical centre finds it doesn’t have enough flu vaccine, it contacts its local immunisation coordinator and they’re moved around.”
Asked if medical professionals who claimed they couldn’t get vaccines were wrong, and needed to find the doses themselves, Ardern said: “I would argue that DHBs need to take some responsibility for making sure people have the flu jabs that they need.
“We will do our job of getting additional vaccines in the country – and we are. We have expectations that we will have a total of 1.7m vaccines – more than we have ever vaccinated for the flu ever before in New Zealand.”
Except it wasn’t a misrepresentation, it was the truth, and the only people misrepresenting anything were in fact the Prime Minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
“Know us by our deeds,” she says…then that would make them an omnishambles on flu vaccines. From bean to cup they stuff up.
They botched housing, now they’ve botched vaccines. What else have they botched and not told us about?
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