Three towns and one district have now surpassed 90 per cent of their populations having at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Photo / Michael Craig
Three towns and one district have now exceeded 90 per cent of their populations having at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
As of Tuesday, Queenstown (94.8 per cent), Wellington (92.9 per cent), Selwyn District (92.9 per cent) and Dunedin (91.7 per cent) had all achieved the target.
Auckland is sitting just shy of that with 88.5 per cent.
Super Saturday appears to have had a big effect in Ashburton. It has had one of the lowest vaccination rates throughout the rollout but jumped from 76 per cent with one dose last Thursday, to 85.5 per cent on Tuesday.
Last month, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that having 90 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated could eliminate any need for tough stay-at-home orders and see restrictions eased.
A further push is still needed but the four towns are well on their way to achieving this.
Dunedin just needs another 13.1 per cent of residents to have their second dose to reach 90 per cent full vaccination.
In data supplied by the Ministry of Health, the Herald is regularly publishing the proportion of people partially and fully vaccinated across all 66 New Zealand territorial authorities, highlighting the top 20 towns.
Covid Minister Chris Hipkins told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB they were now getting down to the harder-reach group of first vaccinators.
"It is those first doses though that we have to get more movement on," he said.
They were seeing good second dose progress and that made an "enormous" difference in hospitalisations.
He said he didn't have any new case numbers today, it was too early to tell what they would be like, but said they were getting "closer to 100".
Asked about yesterday's cases hitting 94, Hipkins said it wasn't a surprise and they knew case numbers would continue to rise.
However, when pressed by Hosking about Auckland going to level 4, Hipkins ruled it out - at this stage.
Dalton Taylor's city centre attack lasted more than seven minutes.