An upcoming technical change to vaccine coverage
reporting will see 233,000 more New Zealanders added to the
list of those eligible for their COVID-19 vaccinations, as
part of continuous improvements to the vaccination
programme.
The change will see Te Whatu Ora – Health
New Zealand move to using updated health system user (HSU)
data to report on vaccination coverage across the motu from
next week.
The HSU population counts the number of
people in New Zealand who have used health services over a
12-month period. Until now, 2020 data has been used to
calculate vaccination rates, but from Monday 8 August, 2021
data will be used.
“Data like this is invaluable to
help inform our planning and vaccination activities – such
as where to direct mobile vaccination clinics, or to
organise pop-up vaccinations and other events in areas where
uptake may be low,” said Dr Nick Chamberlain, National
Director of the National Public Health Service, Te Whatu
Ora.
While moving to the 2021 HSU data would mean a
technical decrease in reported vaccination rates overall due
to the larger number of eligible New Zealanders being
identified, Dr Chamberlain said it did not mean any fewer
people were vaccinated.
“Despite this technical
change, the total number of people aged over 12 who’ve had
at least two vaccinations has risen from 3.63 million at the
beginning of December 2021, to 3.98 million as at 1 August
2022. And with thousands of people still being vaccinated
every day, and more than 11.1 million vaccinations given to
New Zealanders aged 5 and up so far, coverage remains very
high.”
New Zealand remains one of the world’s most
highly vaccinated countries for COVID-19, sitting in the top
half of the group of OECD nations. Our international rating
reported by Our World in Data (sourced from the United
Nations World Population Prospects) will not change with the
transition to HSU 2021.
“The added benefit of moving
to the updated dataset is that it has helped us identify a
large group of New Zealanders who have engaged with the
health system over the past year – thanks in large part to
the success of the largest vaccination programme in the
nation’s history. This means we are better placed than
ever to reach out to those people and ensure they are
encouraged to be up to date with their vaccinations if they
haven’t already done so,” Dr Chamberlain
said.
“The updated data also complements our wider
suite of vaccination initiatives, such as a $3.52m
investment to increase the data capability of Māori
providers – as well as on the ground activity, including
the recent rollout of Te Whātoro, a set of mobile
vaccination vans run by iwi health providers in
Northland.”
Dr Andrew Old, Deputy Director-General
of the Public Health Agency for Manatū Hauora – Ministry
of Health, said it was pleasing that continued use of the
HSU had also been endorsed by Stats NZ, following a recent
review being released today, along with recommendations for
improvement.
“Manatū Hauora requested the Stats NZ
peer review as part of our commitment to continuously
improve the way we collect data to report on vaccination
rates, and we welcome their recommendations. Aside from one
recommendation that we are still working through with other
agencies, every other recommendation has been accepted and
we are actively working to implement them. This includes
updating the HSU data every six months.
“The changes
we’ve made, in collaboration with Stats NZ, will ensure
the HSU can continue to be used for the vaccine programme
into the future and applied to other health programmes where
this would be useful,” Dr Old said.
The
Ministry of Health’s response can be found here https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/response-stats-nz-recommendations-health-service-user-dataset
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