Several New Zealanders who say they are in priority categories are still desperately holding out for a COVID-19 vaccine despite other healthy Kiwis receiving jab invites from their doctor or DHB.
Newshub revealed on Friday some older people in 'Group 3' of the Government's COVID-19 vaccination rollout likely won't be immunised until August - or possibly later.
Geoff Thomson and his wife both have medical conditions that mean they are in vaccination group three - considered "at risk" of serious illness from COVID-19.
"I've had two strokes, and my wife she's had a pacemaker put in, she's got a heart condition," Thompson explains.
The advice for members of group three was to expect contact from their local DHB about making an appointment anytime from late May.
But Geoff is yet to hear anything.
"I went on to the website and put our names in and since then we've heard nothing.
"They're supposed to be doing the high priority ones first and then go into the next group but it seems some places are doing it back to front."
Dunedin mum Kat Freeman has a son who lives with a disability.
"We are group two because my son with a disability lives with us here at home and we employ a number of support workers so we are regarded as a residential care facility."
Back in April she was told her details would be passed onto her DHB and, as instructed by the Ministry, she waited for a vaccine invitation - but it never came - so she arranged it herself
"I arranged for vaccines for myself and my family, and also for the support workers that work with my son and we arrived for our first vaccination yesterday afternoon and then were turned away because they had run out of vaccines so we've had to rebook."
She now has to wait another two weeks
Meanwhile, 54-year-old Aucklander Paul Foster-Nesbit says he's "astounded" he's just received a DHB invite to get his vaccine and he doesn't know why he's being prioritised.
"I know that there are a lot of other people in their 70s who have not had their vaccine or even received an invitation or an email to book them, so quite surprising yeah."
Newshub has heard from a number of other New Zealanders confused by the vaccination process:
- "My husband is 71, immunocompromised (liver transplant). We have no idea when his Group three 'invitation' will arrive."
- "I have tried to book my jab. It takes forever in a queue and then your call falls out of the queue. You have to be highly motivated and quite competent."
- "We are in Group two - both over 70 with underlying health conditions and live within the Counties Manukau District Health Board area. We had not heard a thing so I pushed via emails and telephone calls to get an appointment."
COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says it's "really difficult to respond based on sort of anecdote, what we are seeing across the country is that DHB's are relatively even in terms of the priority that's being given to group one, group two and group three. but there will be a little bit of variation in that."
He says the biggest constraint is still vaccine supply.
"We will outline next week, early next week, a bit more about how things are going to roll out for group three and four. We've already started group three but there's a big number of people in group three, it's over a million people.
"Then obviously group four is pretty much everybody, and we're not going to be able to give everybody a vaccine on day one so we are going to set out in a bit more detail next week what that will look like."
Until there's more communication those inconsistencies will continue to cause appointment anxiety for people like Thomson and Freeman.
