Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield [Source: NZ Herald]

The Government is finalising arrangements to provide additional supply of Pfizer vaccine doses, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Negotiations had been taking place over the past two weeks.

“We needed to obtain additional supplies.”

There are 21 new community cases today, all in Auckland, director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield said.

Ardern said vaccine demand had been at 180 per cent recently. Per capita the rollout had been higher than the peaks in places like Canada and the UK.

To keep up with this surge demand the Government had been negotiating with Pfizer and other countries to increase supply.

Additional supply was being finalised for September, Ardern said. Final contracts were still being signed so she could not finalise countries nor quantities, but they were Pfizer vaccines.

This would also allow New Zealand to continue its vaccine sharing arrangements with Pacific nations.