Border workers must receive a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of April or risk being moved on to other jobs, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said.
The border worker at Auckland's Grand Millennium isolation facility who tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday had missed two appointments to receive the vaccine before becoming infected.
Ardern told Q+A the border worker works for a company contracted by the Government.
"So for them, it is actually with the employer that we have asked them to ensure their workforce has been vaccinated," she said.
"We need to keep working through with those private contractors to ensure they're fulfilling those obligations."
Ardern said the "ramifications of not being vaccinated are significant".
She said while over 80 per cent of the frontline workers have been successfully vaccinated, the Government is "now moving into the phase where really, the window is closing".
"If they are not vaccinated, and we have already set down that the period from Monday through to the end of this month - if in that period they're not vaccinated, they are redeployed, so that is really last call," she said.
New Zealand is second to last in the OECD for its vaccination rollout per capita, but Jacinda Ardern says it's still going according to plan.
"Let's just acknowledge that these are individuals who've been the first in the queue and the ramifications for them not being vaccinated are huge."
Ardern said in some case, the border workers will be "moved to jobs" and in others, they "may not have a place to go, and so we did give time for individuals to be vaccinated".
She said while "the majority" have been vaccinated, "for that small group [who have chosen not to be vaccinated], we now go through a process".
SHARE ME