Measles vaccination information

10 March 2021 

Dear [name and contact details withheld]

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Thank you for your request dated 26 January 2021 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to measles vaccination data and the measles outbreak in 2019. Your request was partially transferred by the Ministry of Health to PHARMAC on 15 February 2021. You requested:

The number of vaccines acquired to deal with the measles outbreak in 2019 (And, how does that compare with what is normally acquired?).

  • How many of these vaccines were then administered?
  • How many of these vaccines expired before they were administered?
  • How many were acquired in 2020? Have any expired?

Please refer to the tables below for the number of vaccines delivered to New Zealand and administered in each calendar year from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2020.

The total MMR vaccine doses delivered to New Zealand in 2019 and 2020 includes supply for normal use and outbreak management.

  • Of the MMR vaccine doses delivered in 2019, none expired prior to being administered.
  • Of the MMR vaccine doses delivered in 2020, none expired prior to being administered.

Please note, PHARMAC is closely monitoring the distribution of the MMR vaccine and is working with the supplier to ensure that suitable volumes of MMR vaccine are delivered to the National Vaccine Store with an appropriate safety buffer to accommodate any outbreaks.

MMR vaccines doses delivered to New Zealand

Year

Doses delivered

2017

155,500

2018

156,000

2019

449,327

2020

569,520

MMR vaccine doses administered in New Zealand*

Month

2017

2018

2019

2020

January

9,998

10,988

11,759 

12,249

February

10,248

10,667

11,647 

10,866

March

11,201

11,914

40,942 

9,973

April

8,086

9,728

17,932 

5,944

May

11,621

11,535

16,991 

10,444

June

9,690

11,257

13,785 

10,002

July

10,089

11,021

13,953 

10,779

August

10,937

11,521

18,119 

8,418

September

10,442

10,226

50,217 

10,140

October

10,713

11,106

15,281 

12,944

November

12,350

11,368

15,592 

12,225

December

9,108

8,651

14,431

13,525

Total

124,483               

129,982               

241,649             

127,509                 

* This data was extracted 18 February 2021 from the National Immunisation Register, Ministry of Health. Counts are of vaccination events. Duplicates have been removed (when there are multiple events per person per day, only one event is counted). The National Immunisation Register may under report the actual number of vaccinations administered.

The number of MMR vaccine doses held in the National Vaccine Store as of 31 January 2021 was 524,285 doses. We do not hold data on the number of doses on hand with individual vaccinators (eg stock held by general practitioners).

For additional information that may be of interest to you for your request, please refer to our OIA response provided 12 November 2019 regarding the MMR vaccine.

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

Yours sincerely

Rachel Read
Manager, Policy and Government Services