While the Government is celebrating being ahead of schedule with the vaccine rollout, there’s concern some could be jumping the queue.
Currently, if a person is a household contact of a border worker, they are eligible for the vaccine.
There’s no limit on the number of households a border worker can nominate for the jab. However, no one is actually checking that they live with the person they’ve nominated.
As of June 9, more than 16,000 border workers had nominated household contacts.
Half had nominated just one person, but 71 had nominated 10 or more people.
Anna Bittle is one of the more than 25,000 household contacts who have been vaccinated and said she didn’t have to do anything to prove she lived with a border worker.
"They just asked me if I was a household contact, I said yes, and that was it," she told 1 NEWS.
In some cases, if a person simply accompanies an eligible worker to their appointment they can also get vaccinated — without having to be a household contact.
That decision is up to the site manager.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said the country’s vaccination programme is a high trust model and relies on border workers’ honesty when it comes to nominating household contacts.
"We’re not going and sending inspectors to people’s homes to check whether they are living with a border worker or not," Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said.
National’s spokesperson for Covid-19 said the rollout was a mess and things need to improve immediately.
It comes amid news more than 750,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered, with half a million people already receiving their first jab.
But residents at an Auckland retirement village are still waiting to get theirs.
"I went for my appointment but couldn’t get in because of all the other people," one person told 1 NEWS, with another getting their appointment cancelled three days before it was due.
Others have told 1 NEWS elderly family members received confusing information from their District Health Board and now can only get the vaccine in August, despite being over the age of 90.
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