"We were really pleased to get an early uptake of Covid-19 vaccinations by our health workforce across the district. Because of demand, we opened extra clinic slots to enable as many health workers to get vaccinated early on as possible."
Frontline health workers include health board staff, primary care, hospice, aged care, dentists and disability staff.
"The relationships we have across general practice, kaupapa Māori providers, primary, and other community providers ensured that we had a good uptake of the vaccination in the initial few weeks of our rollout," Simpson said.
When asked if the health board would follow others such as Northland and begin offering up the vaccination to people aged over 50, Simpson said it would follow national sequencing framework.
Whanganui District Health Board chief executive Russell Simpson. Photo / File
"We are currently focused on tier 2 which includes health workers, people in aged care facilities and people being supported at home by carers. This will be reconsidered by the team as the roll out to tier 3 progresses."
The start of tier 3 vaccinations depends on two things, the national rollout and the local completion of tier 2 vaccinations.
Simpson was pleased with the number of health workers who had approached applied to be vaccinators.
"We need to increase our staff numbers further once we open our large centre and we have further applicants to follow up."
The health board is planning to establish one large Whanganui town centre vaccine facility, a range of rural or suburb facilities, pop-up facilities in wider rural areas and then home based facilities for people who are unable to leave their homes.
Vaccine rollout for the general population is expected to start around June or July.
Next week, the health board will be supporting nurses at Whanganui Prison to vaccinate Corrections staff, who are part of tier 2.
On Friday around 20 health workers attended an education session answering a variety of questions about Covid-19, how the vaccine was developed and tested, how it will be rolled out and more.
The session was in the lecture theatre at Whanganui Hospital and was hosted by Covid-19 education facilitator from the National Immunisation Advisory Council Nicola Metcalfe.
The lecture was created to educate health workers and stakeholders about all things Covid-19, including what is in the vaccine, how it is made, how it works and more.
Metcalfe said it would liaise with the health board in terms of organising lectures for the general public to be able to attend with the first expected to happen before the end of the month.
