'Dishonest' – Bishop, Hipkins in standoff over delayed jab rollout claims

September 22, 2021

The Covid-19 Minister says Chris Bishop had been told multiple times it wasn’t true.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says the Government has not slowed down the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines after comments from National’s Covid-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop.

After Bishop said he was leaked Ministry of Health documents from May by a "whistleblower", he claimed the Government “consciously slowed” deliveries of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines by about two months. 

On Wednesday, Hipkins said Bishop had made similar claims about delayed vaccine deliveries “repeated times despite being told that’s not true”. 

He said the document Bishop had was only “one of a number of models” the Ministry of Health had put together when exact delivery dates were still uncertain. 

“Those are prudent things to do to plan for the different scenarios that you have. I think it is absolutely dishonest for him [Bishop] to say that we have, in any way, delayed vaccine deliveries,” Hipkins said. 

“The fact he continues to make it is a poor reflection upon him.”

When asked about Hipkins' comments, Bishop told 1News he was just "relying on the Government's own information and his [Hipkins'] comments, so I don't know what he's complaining about". 

Earlier, Bishop said the leaked documents showed New Zealand’s entire stock of Pfizer vaccines were meant to be delivered by the end of September. 

“A 21 May document from the Ministry of Health, leaked to National, shows the Ministry expected 650,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to be delivered per week from July onwards, with delivery completed by the end of September,” Bishop said. 

He said the document "squares exactly" with what Hipkins had said in public that all of the country's vaccine shipments would arrive by the end of September.

"So, I think what has happened between May and now is the Government has slowed down the delivery because they didn't have the capability to deliver what was going to end up in New Zealand," he said.

In his media release, Bishop included a Ministry of Health document he said was leaked to him titled “workforce planning”.

The Ministry of Health document National MP Chris Bishop says he was leaked.

The document also showed the number of doses administered was meant to peak at the end of July.

In August, Stuff reported that Hipkins had admitted to misinterpreting vaccine delivery schedules by a month. He said while he previously made comments to the media that the country’s entire shipment of 10 million Pfizer doses would arrive by September 30, in actual fact, they were arriving throughout October. 

1News asked Bishop about the story from Stuff — which he'd commented in — and whether that may have explained Hipkins' comments. Bishop pointed to a Newstalk ZB interview in June where Hipkins had said the country may "smooth" vaccine deliveries out to November to avoid having to store too many doses in freezers.

"It just, I think, speaks to the problems of the rollout from the start of this year that we couldn't go faster and get the vaccines into people's arms sooner than we otherwise did," Bishop said.

"I think you take the Minister's word for it until you see the countervailing evidence. I think this [the document] is the evidence that, somewhere along the line, the Government has consciously decided to slow down vaccine delivery into New Zealand."

In the past few months, when challenged about the pace of the vaccine rollout, Hipkins and the Prime Minister said it was their intention — after Pfizer was chosen as the country’s preferred brand — to ramp up the rollout in the latter half of 2021. 

Jacinda Ardern said supply was no longer an issue when it came to New Zealand’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout , and that anyone who wanted a jab now could get it 

She said the country was expecting a total of 1.8 million vaccine doses to be delivered throughout September. Included in that total is the additional doses purchased from Spain and Denmark. 

About 75 per cent of eligible Kiwis have now received at least one dose of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine. 

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