COVID-19 vaccine agreement

Thank you for your request, partially transferred from Ministry of Health (Manatū Hauora) to Pharmac, on 17 April 2023 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to COIVD-19 vaccines. You asked: 

Were there any requests, requirements or restrictions agreed with or issued by any covid19 vaccine suppliers which in any way directly or indirectly have: a) discouraged antibody testing or availability? b) discouraged lab assessments of test reliability or specificity? c) discouraged publicity of false-positive tests? d) discouraged clinicians from doing tests that would confirm non-covid19 pathogen e) discouraged doctors from asking questions about the tests or the vaccines. 

Pharmac took over the management of COVID-19 vaccine supply from 1 July 2022. The Ministry of Health determines who can access the COVID-19 vaccine. General information about COVID-19 vaccine supply can be found on our website.

We have not provided further information or documents with this response as we do not hold any information about “requests, requirements, or restrictions agreed with or issued by any COVID-19 vaccine suppliers”, as detailed in your request above. We have also considered whether any other organisation subject to the OIA is likely to hold information related to your request however, in this instance, we do not believe that to be the case (section 18(g)(i) of the OIA). 

Please note, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman about our response to your OIA, under section 28(3) of the OIA. Details of how to make a complaint(external link) are on the Ombudsman’s website. 

We trust that this information answers your queries. To make information more freely available, we publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.