Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: Napier MP Stuart Nash gets vaccinated

Taking one for his country - Napier MP Stuart Nash with nurse Jennie Dinneen at the vaccine centre on Thursday. Photo / Paul Taylor

If it was indecision you want from your MP then perhaps it was on show in the most pointed way as Napier MP and Minister of Tourism Stuart Nash finally rocked up for his Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday.

But it's never been a question of whether to take the vaccine, more one of when.

Like most MPs he's been torn between the question of whether Members of Parliament should have any preferential treatment, go hard and get it done early and be seen as jumping the queue, or taking it in turn like everyone else.

He chose the latter and about 3.50pm on August 19, six months after the first vaccine was given in New Zealand to a group of nurses in February, he entered the booth with nurse Jennie Dinneen and got the jab at the Napier Old Boys Marist club pop-up vaccine centre run by The Doctors.

It took less time than it took Hawke's Bay Today photographer Paul Taylor to capture the moment, and Nash exclaimed: "Is that it?"

The 54-year-old MP wasn't talking about the picture. "You don't even feel it," he said.
He said that despite the role of MPs, it would not have been a "great look" to pretend to be "someone special" when it came to getting the vaccine.

Wife Sarah is set for her appointment, and he expects his 19-year-old daughter in Auckland and 16-year-old son in Napier to follow as the programme steps up throughout the country.

There hadn't been a specific direction to MPs about when to get their vaccine, other than that he got the text message from "the system" as the next group was opened up last week and made the booking.

Aware some people have not found the booking process quite so simple, he said if on-line processes weren't helping, people should "ring the number and get it done".

"I wouldn't have wanted to be seen as jumping the queue," he said. "It would have been horrible."

As it happens, not even director general of health Ashley Bloomfield has yet had the vaccine.

Nash's appointment came on the second day of the new level 4 lockdown, and just a couple of hours after the daily update that said a one-day record of 195,537 people had made their bookings the previous day.