Finishing New Zealand's Covid-19 vaccine roll out by the end of this year would "certainly be something we would aspire to do", says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins.
It comes as the Government yesterday announced the first approval for a Covid-19 vaccine in New Zealand could come through from February 3. Once vaccinations are approved and have arrived in New Zealand, border workers and managed isolation staff would be the first to get vaccinated, with the wider population likely to begin mid-year.
Hipkins said the aspiration to finish the vaccination campaign by the end of 2021 would be dependent on vaccine shipments and approvals.
"There's still a lot of 'what-ifs'," he said.
When asked how long a mass vaccination campaign that would begin in June would take, Hipkins said it would be a numbers game.
"At this point we're planning on scaling up as fast as we can."
He gave the example of vaccinating 50,000 people a day with a double-dose vaccination - "that's about 200 days it would take to complete the overall vaccination campaign".
"There may well be that we can have a series of targeted events where we can get those numbers up significantly higher than that."
Director of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said they were aiming for the vaccination of at least 70 per cent of the population, with part of that depending on the efficacy of the individual vaccine type.
He said the Ministry of Health found in December that 70 per cent of the population would not hesitate to get the vaccine if they had good information about it. Another 20 per cent Bloomfield described as "vaccine hesitant, who need good information, they need advice from people they trust", and about 10 per cent did not want to get vaccinated.
"The more people who are vaccinated, the more people who have individual protection and the more likely we are able to get that herd immunity effect, where we stop any transmission in the community," Bloomfield said.
Under current circumstances, border workers and essential staff would be vaccinated in the second quarter of 2021. The next group to be vaccinated would be high-risk frontline health workers and frontline public sector and emergency service staff. The third group would be older people and those with underlying health conditions, and also at risk health and social service workers.
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