14 September 2022

Nick Kearney
[FYI request #20304 email]

Kia ora Nick

Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-020039
Thank you for your request of 21 August 2022, asking for the following information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):

1. a list of all Comirnaty vaccine injury claims grouped by age and injury type between January 2018
and 21 August 2022; and
2. a summary of the total number of vaccine injury claims for all other vaccines grouped by year and
vaccine name between Jan 2018 and 21 August 2022; and
3. a list of how many Comirnaty vaccine injury claims are/were approved, rejected and stil  waiting
processing including the day the claim was first lodged with ACC for the relevant period referred to
above.

COVID-19 vaccine injury data is available online
We publish COVID-19 vaccine injury data on the ACC website at https://www.acc.co.nz/assets/oia-
responses/covid-19-vaccination-claims-refresh-august-2022-ipa-8450.pdf. The latest dataset is up to date
as of 22 August 2022 and the data is updated on a quarterly basis. The claims data is broken down by: dose;
claim cover decision (accepted, declined, pending); primary injury; decline reason; severity of injury;
ethnicity; sex; lodgement month; DHB region and, time between date of injury and lodgement date.

As COVID-19 vaccine injury data is publicly available, we are refusing to provide a copy of the data in this
response. This decision has been made under section 18(d) of the Act.

We are refusing to provide data by COVID-19 vaccine type
ACC does not routinely record the type of COVID-19 vaccine used. As such, identifying this information (if
held) would require us to manual y read through al  3,095 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims. Therefore, we
are refusing to provide data for this part of your request as it would require substantial collation or
research to extract. This decision has been made under section 18(f) of the Act.

In doing so, we considered extending our timeframe to respond and charging (under the Act). However,
neither of these options have been offered as it was determined that the resources required to extract the
information would have a significant impact on the everyday function of the team(s) involved.

Time between claim lodgement and date of decision
Please find attached to this response letter two tables. Table 1 provides a breakdown of the time between
the date claims were lodged to when the claim decision was made. Table 2 shows how long claims with a
pending decision have been waiting for a cover decision to be made, as at 20 August 2022.

We are unable to provide claim counts fewer than four
Accordingly, some of the figures in the tables provided only indicate that the claims count is fewer than
four (denoted as <4). This limits the potential for particular individuals or matters specific to certain
individuals from being identified. This decision has been made under section 9(2)(a) of the Act. In doing so,

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we have considered the public interest in making the information available and determined that it does not
outweigh the need to protect our clients’ privacy.

For further notes about the data, please refer to the link at the beginning of this letter.

As this information may be of interest to other members of the public
ACC has decided to proactively release a copy of this response on ACC’s website. All requester data,
including your name and contact details, will be removed prior to release. The released response will be
made available www.acc.co.nz/resources/#/category/12.

If you have any questions about this response, please get in touch
You can email me at [email address].

If you are not happy with this response, you can also contact the Ombudsman via
[email address] or by phoning 0800 802 602. Information about how to make a complaint
is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz

Ngā mihi

Sara Freitag
Acting Manager Official Information Act Services
Government Engagement

GOV-020039 Page 2 of 2

Document Outline