24 April 2024
Chris Johnston
[FYI request #26213 email] Tēnā koe Chris
Your request for official information, reference: HNZ00041853
Thank you for your email on 25 March 2024, asking Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora for
datasets relating to the COVID vaccine under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act).
A copy of your request is included overleaf.
Response Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora can provide vaccine type, by batch, by receipt and expiry
date, by doses received, administered and wasted. Please refer to the “HNZ00041853 attachment”
containing the data extracted from the Aotearoa Immunisation Register. This data was accurate as
at 20 March 2024.
However, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora cannot provide data “used on the pay per dose
system”, as we do not capture that information. Therefore, that part of your request is refused
under section 18(g) of the Act, as the information is not held by Health New Zealand | Te Whatu
Ora, nor do we believe it is held by any other agency subject to the Act.
We are also refusing the remainder of your request under section 18(f) of the Act, because to
make the information available would require substantial collation and research. In making this
decision, we have considered extending the timeframe, or charging, as allowed under the Act.
However, neither of these options have been offered as we have determined that providing this
information would unreasonably interfere with the everyday functions of the teams involved.
How to get in touch
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[email address]. If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Health New Zealand | Te
Whatu Ora may proactively release a copy of this response on our website. All requester data,
including your name and contact details, will be removed prior to release.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Nicola Birch Chief Advisor, Prevention National Public Health Service
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora, PO Box 793,
Wellington 6140, New Zealand
Your request
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
For the following request can you please extract from the Health NZ database the data “as is” in a
machine readable csv format.
This is to assess the quality and completeness of the data being recorded so that the public and
suitable analysts can make an independent assessment and extract any useful information.
Therefore there is no need for the data entry to be 100% complete or correct, nor for Health NZ
staff to be diverted from other operational tasks to make any amendments. The dataset just needs
to be extracted in the way that has been requested below by a DBA with knowledge of the relevant
databases.
COLUMNS OF DATASET 1
S0: Source Country – eg USA, Spain
S1: Manufacturer Name – e.g. Pfizer
S2: Product Name and Version/Code – eg there may be a nomenclature regarding initial doses
and subsequent booster doses. This may be easier to extract as separate fields.
S3: Manufacturer Batch Number – as provided by the Manufacturer
S4: Number of Doses supplied – by the Manufacturer in that Batch
S5: Date of First Supply – the Minimum Date recorded for when a batch was received by Health
NZ
S6: Date of Last Supply – the Maximum Date recorded for when a batch was received by Health
NZ
D1: Pay Per Dose (PPD) Batch Number – the internal ID used on the Health NZ PPD system
D2: Sending Site – eg Name of the Pharmacy or Vax Centre
Sending Site Type – eg Pharmacy
D3: Number of Doses Recorded as Dispatched – as recorded in the relevant database at the time
the query is run (without correction or alteration)
D4: Date of First Dispatch – the Minimum Date recorded for when a batch was dispatched to a
Sending Site
D5: Date of Last Dispatch – the Maximum Date recorded for when a batch was dispatched to a
Sending Site
NOTES ON DATA ITEMS
N1: Columns marked S1 to S6 should be repeated where they relate to a dispatch from that
supplied batch.
N2: S5 and S6 are less important and can be excluded if they are not available in the dataset.
N3: Null or zero entries may occur and Health NZ should provide a general explanation (not row by
row in the dataset) of the reasons why these occur – eg data entry issues so some batch numbers
are incorrect.
N4: Totals may not align – and the Health NZ should provide a general explanation (not row by
row in the dataset) of the reasons why these occur – eg “business process not followed”, “doses
lost”, “doses that were not stored corrected and were therefore wasted”.
N5: No quantification is required for the reasons above – just a reasonable bullet point list of the
reasons that Health NZ is aware of from existing documentation and knowledge in the minds of
public servants/officials.
N6: Please provide a description of the columns provided with details of any coding scheme/rules
used to generate DATASET 1 or DATASET 2
N7: Where a supplied batch is dispatched multiple times to a Sending Site across multiple months
then these records in the database would be grouped into one line.
N8: Where there is no Dispatch record to the Sending Site – the record of the administration of the
dose to a person can be used as a proxy for the dispatch record – with the date of administration
used instead of the date of dispatch.
N9: For the avoidance of doubt, incorrect Batch IDs or other items are OK. This is an audit of the
Health NZ data quality and an exercise in statistically extracting information of use for the public
and professionals using techniques that have a high degree of fault tolerance.
EXAMPLE
For a Pfizer batch of 100 doses that was received all on 1/4/2021 split and sent to a Pharmacy
(30) and a GP Practice (50) with 20 doses wasted during April 2021 the 2 lines in the csv file might
look something like.
“USA”,“Pfizer”, “Vax1234”, “BatchABCD”, 100, 01/04/2021, 01/04/2021, 11, “Pharmacy1234”,
“Pharmacy”, 30, 15/04/2021,15/04/2021
“USA”,”Pfizer”, “Vax1234”, “BatchABCD”, 100, 01/04/2021, 01/04/2021, 11, “GP4567”, “GP”, 50,
11/04/2021,26/04/2021
POSSIBLE EXCEPTION CONDITION – UNHANDLED MANY TO MANY RELATIONSHIP
N10: Where a dispatch contains items from many supplied batches the database should have
separate records and this will be able to be split across two or more records for each supplied
batch. If this many to many relationship is not handled in the database (that is end-to-end track-
and-trace cannot be undertaken by Health NZ) then a) exclude these dispatches from the
DATASET 1 above and b) please also provide a second dataset DATASET 2 with these
dispatches and only include the following Columns:
DATASET 2
D1: Pay Per Dose (PPD) Batch Number – the internal ID used on the Health NZ PPD system
D2: Sending Site – eg Name of the Pharmacy or Vax Centre
Sending Site Type – eg Pharmacy
D3: Number of Doses Recorded as Dispatched – as recorded in the relevant database at the time
the query is run (without correction or alteration)
D4: Date of First Dispatch – the Minimum Date recorded for when a batch was dispatched to a
Sending Site
D5: Date of Last Dispatch – the Maximum Date recorded for when a batch was dispatched to a
Sending Site
S0: Source Country – eg USA, Spain
S1: Manufacturer Name – e.g. Pfizer
S2: Product Name and Version/Code – eg there may be a nomenclature regarding initial doses
and subsequent booster doses. This may be easier to extract as separate fields.
S3: Manufacturer Batch Number – as provided by the Manufacturer
S4: Number of Doses supplied – by the Manufacturer in that Batch
S5: Date of First Supply – the Minimum Date recorded for when a batch was received by Health
NZ
S6: Date of Last Supply – the Maximum Date recorded for when a batch was received by Health
NZ
N11: Where the affected dispatches are listed and duplicated across rows that identify the possible
Manufacturer supplied batches that they could have come from. My suggestion is that the possible
supplied batches for affected dispatched doses can be narrowed by a DBA using date ranges.
N12: Please name and state whether you have returned DATASET 1, DATASET 2 or both.
REASONABLENESS OF REQUEST
This request removes the need for any cleaning or completing of the data by Health NZ and will
only require the services of a DBA/analyst to aggregate and group data that has been collected
during the normal course of Health NZ’s business.
This OIA does not require Health NZ to make any judgement about “fit for purpose” as this is an
audit of what actually has been recorded in the database, and the judgement of what is useful will
be able to be made by the receivers of the OIA’s dataset.
No patient privacy issues are involved so there is no need to suppress counts less than a certain
number.
No commercial issues are relevant as this OIA deals purely with dispatch not the number of doses
administered – and there may be many reasons for payment to differ substantially from dispatch.
In order to establish data integrity and auditability (eg for wastage or quality control between
supply and dispatch and other scenarios of interest), it is necessary to track by the relevant IDs
supplied by the manufacturer and the PPD system maintained by the Health NZ.
This type of dataset request Health NZ has successfully fulfilled for past OIAs.
