[Source: TVNZ]

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has defended New Zealand’s slow roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine, insisting it’s not a level playing field between countries.

Ardern has defended New Zealand’s slow roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine, insisting it’s not a level playing field between countries.

She says because of the lower degree of urgency, some countries who sign vaccine agreements after New Zealand may in fact receive their supplies earlier.

“I did all of the cases at the link and so really that gives us that head start so that means we know what to look for we need to find the people who may have had contact with those cases that’s very different to what we experienced last August, what we were experiencing was we didn’t know where it had started, we didn’t how far the reach of it may have been that’s a very different way of managing those two different outbreaks.”

The country is still on a “similar protectory” to other countries says Ardern, with vaccination rates bound to ramp up as the nation’s roll outreaches the next phase.