Age Profile of NZ Population without COVID shot (Unvaccinated) over time - Sept 2024 Update
Chris Johnston made this Official Information request to Health New Zealand
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From: Chris Johnston
Dear Health New Zealand,
Please provide a machine readable dataset in csv/Excel format that shows the total number of people by age and gender that are unvaccinated with any COVID shot from 1 Jan 2020 through to the present day as at the end of each calendar month.
The columns of the dataset would be expected to include:
1) Date: Date at the end of the month with the earliest date being 31 Jan 2020. That is the first year of data will give a baseline of variation by month that subsequent years that included the vaccination programme can be compared to.
2) Age: Age from birth as at the end of the month. 0 is the age up to 364 days, 1 is from 1 year to 1 year and 364 days etc. The highest age category should be 100+
3) Gender: Male/Female/Unknown or Other
4) Number of People: Count of the population of people under the care/enrolled in the NZ public health system who are unvaccinated with any dose of any of the COVID vaccines. The number in this column will change based on the variation in the enrolled population, the aging of the unvaccinated each month, deaths, and by the number of people transferring into the "COVID vaccinated" group.
Once a query has been written for one month, it should be able to be rerun for each subsequent month on a programmed loop - minimising the effort involved. The code for this OIA has previously been written for a previous OIA by HealthNZ.
Cell obfuscation: a) Where a cell is <5 people please populate this with "<5" for confidentiality. b) True zero cells should be shown - or at least not included in the dataset and not marked as <5. Please state which method has been used.
Please do consult as early as possible if there are any issues or questions.
This is similar in intensity and effort to previous OIAs for data that Health NZ has successfully responded to. A full history is being requested as some cell values may have changed as HealthNZ cleans up its data (eg where a gender is now known but was unknown when a previous OIA was fulfilled).
Yours faithfully,
Chris Johnston
From: hnzOIA
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From: hnzOIA
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Kia ora Chris,
Thank you for your request for information. Please find attached our
response to your request.
If you have any questions, please get in touch at
[1][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 [2]www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by phoning 0800 802 602.
Ngā mihi
Obaid (He/him)
Government Services
[3]TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
Statement of confidentiality: This email message and any accompanying
attachments may contain information that is IN-CONFIDENCE and subject to
legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use,
disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have
received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and
delete this message
References
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From: Chris Johnston
Dear hnzOIA,
Thank you for this response and dataset which I have reviewed.
There appears to be a significant problem with this dataset where the numbers greatly diverge from previous Health NZ OIAs and the sequence of numbers over time do not make sense.
The previous OIA dataset to the end of April 2024 was: Appendix One HNZ00041545.xlsx
The file for this OIA to the end of Sept 2024 is: HNZ00067725 Appendix.xlsx
Could you please review and correct these errors of:
1) Consistency
2) Completeness.
To help you diagnose the problem I draw your attention to the following example for Females that are 12 years old.
April 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 31,703 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
28/02/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/03/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
30/04/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/05/2021 - 31,426 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
For the April figures I was able to clean up the Health NZ data and interpolate the figures to produce the required analysis, however the OIA for the end of Sept 2024 has used "<6" - preventing the ability to distinguish between low numbers of people in a scenario vs the need to interpolate the figure from the surrounding months (consistency). Ideally the dataset would simply include the correct number of people directly (completeness).
Sept 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 32,008 - change seems to be due to classifying people with a previously unknown gender.
28/02/2021 - <6 - where the number we are expecting in 30,000+ !
31/03/2021 - <6 - as above
30/04/2021 - <6 - as above
31/05/2021 - 31,688 - small change due to gender classification.
By my estimate the Health NZ dataset produced to the end of Sept 2024 is missing approx:
- 750,000 people each month in the months February to April 2021
- 600,000 to 500,000 people each month May to October 2021
- 30,000 to 160,000 people each month November 2021 to April 2023
- 20,000 to 30,000 people each month Jun 2021 to April 2024 (except possibly Aug 2023)
Hopefully the above is helpful and you can turn this around promptly.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston
From: Chris Johnston
Dear hnzOIA,
Can you please acknowledge the receipt of this request on 5 Nov 2024 for the information in the OIA response to be corrected?
"Dear hnzOIA,
Thank you for this response and dataset which I have reviewed.
There appears to be a significant problem with this dataset where the numbers greatly diverge from previous Health NZ OIAs and the sequence of numbers over time do not make sense.
The previous OIA dataset to the end of April 2024 was: Appendix One HNZ00041545.xlsx
The file for this OIA to the end of Sept 2024 is: HNZ00067725 Appendix.xlsx
Could you please review and correct these errors of:
1) Consistency
2) Completeness.
To help you diagnose the problem I draw your attention to the following example for Females that are 12 years old.
April 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 31,703 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
28/02/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/03/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
30/04/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/05/2021 - 31,426 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
For the April figures I was able to clean up the Health NZ data and interpolate the figures to produce the required analysis, however the OIA for the end of Sept 2024 has used "<6" - preventing the ability to distinguish between low numbers of people in a scenario vs the need to interpolate the figure from the surrounding months (consistency). Ideally the dataset would simply include the correct number of people directly (completeness).
Sept 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 32,008 - change seems to be due to classifying people with a previously unknown gender.
28/02/2021 - <6 - where the number we are expecting in 30,000+ !
31/03/2021 - <6 - as above
30/04/2021 - <6 - as above
31/05/2021 - 31,688 - small change due to gender classification.
By my estimate the Health NZ dataset produced to the end of Sept 2024 is missing approx:
- 750,000 people each month in the months February to April 2021
- 600,000 to 500,000 people each month May to October 2021
- 30,000 to 160,000 people each month November 2021 to April 2023
- 20,000 to 30,000 people each month Jun 2021 to April 2024 (except possibly Aug 2023)
Hopefully the above is helpful and you can turn this around promptly."
Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston
From: hnzOIA
Kia ora Chris,
Please note that the differences in the present output and the previous
output generated for this request in April 2024 can be attributed to the
variation in the population. The AIR is used to define the population, and
this is a dynamic dataset which is updated daily due to people entering
and leaving the country, deaths, etc. Therefore, it is expected that the
population will change depending on when data is extracted.
Regarding the ‘completeness issue', these cells have been suppressed due
to the counts being high enough to potentially allow identification of
vaccinated people if compared against the overall population. For example:
* In January 2021, there were no 12-year-old females who had received a
dose of Covid vaccine and so the number provided for this month was
total population of 12-year-old females.
* In February, March and April 2021 more than zero but less than six
12-year-old females had received a dose of Covid vaccine. While the
cell count would be much larger than 6, the cell count for these
months could be subtracted from the cell count in January 2021 to get
the number of 12-year-old females who had received a dose of Covid
vaccine, which would be a number smaller than six.
* Because of this, we must apply secondary data suppression for
February, March and April 2021 to preserve data privacy.
In the output provided back in April 2024, we differentiated between small
number suppression and secondary suppression by using “<5” and “N/S”
respectively, however, when the outputs were run again in September 2024,
this differentiation did not occur and “<6” was used for both small number
suppression and secondary suppression.
We apologise for the confusion this may have caused. All cells that have
been suppressed have been done so to protect the privacy of individuals.
Ngâ mihi
Obaid (He/him)
Government Services
[1]TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
------------------- Original Message -------------------
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #28679 email]>;
Received: Sat Nov 09 2024 22:24:42 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
To: hnzOIA <[email address]>; HNZ OIA
<[email address]>;
Subject: Re: Response to your request for information HNZ00067725
CRM:0121831
Dear hnzOIA,
Can you please acknowledge the receipt of this request on 5 Nov 2024 for
the information in the OIA response to be corrected?
"Dear hnzOIA,
Thank you for this response and dataset which I have reviewed.
There appears to be a significant problem with this dataset where the
numbers greatly diverge from previous Health NZ OIAs and the sequence of
numbers over time do not make sense.
The previous OIA dataset to the end of April 2024 was: Appendix One
HNZ00041545.xlsx
The file for this OIA to the end of Sept 2024 is: HNZ00067725
Appendix.xlsx
Could you please review and correct these errors of:
1) Consistency
2) Completeness.
To help you diagnose the problem I draw your attention to the following
example for Females that are 12 years old.
April 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 31,703 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
28/02/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/03/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
30/04/2021 - N/S - a completeness issue.
31/05/2021 - 31,426 12 year old females with no dose of the vaccine
For the April figures I was able to clean up the Health NZ data and
interpolate the figures to produce the required analysis, however the OIA
for the end of Sept 2024 has used "<6" - preventing the ability to
distinguish between low numbers of people in a scenario vs the need to
interpolate the figure from the surrounding months (consistency). Ideally
the dataset would simply include the correct number of people directly
(completeness).
Sept 2024 OIA has the following figures:
31/01/2021 - 32,008 - change seems to be due to classifying people with a
previously unknown gender.
28/02/2021 - <6 - where the number we are expecting in 30,000+ !
31/03/2021 - <6 - as above
30/04/2021 - <6 - as above
31/05/2021 - 31,688 - small change due to gender classification.
By my estimate the Health NZ dataset produced to the end of Sept 2024 is
missing approx:
- 750,000 people each month in the months February to April 2021
- 600,000 to 500,000 people each month May to October 2021
- 30,000 to 160,000 people each month November 2021 to April 2023
- 20,000 to 30,000 people each month Jun 2021 to April 2024 (except
possibly Aug 2023)
Hopefully the above is helpful and you can turn this around promptly."
Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston
-----Original Message-----
Kia ora Chris,
Thank you for your request for information. Please find attached our
response to your request.
If you have any questions, please get in touch at
[1][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 [2]https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlo...
or by phoning 0800 802 602.
Ngâ mihi
Obaid (He/him)
Government Services
[3]TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
Statement of confidentiality: This email message and any accompanying
attachments may contain information that is IN-CONFIDENCE and subject to
legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use,
disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have
received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and
delete this message
References
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From: Chris Johnston
Dear hnzOIA,
Thanks for your reply.
The explanations provided are understood.
I note this paragraph in HealthNZ's reply:
"In the output provided back in April 2024, we differentiated between small
number suppression and secondary suppression by using “<5” and “N/S”
respectively, however, when the outputs were run again in September 2024,
this differentiation did not occur and “<6” was used for both small number
suppression and secondary suppression."
For clarity so that the public know which cells have been suppressed in which way - can the dataset please be provided again with the differentiation "<6" and "N/S". The differentiation is important and the label provided is misleading - and incorrect on its face when N/S is applicable (because the number is actually more than 5).
Please include the explanation of each suppression in the reference notes/legend provided in the spreadsheet.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston
From: hnzOIA
Tēnā koe,
Thank you for contacting Health NZ, Te Whatu Ora. This is an automatic
reply to confirm that we have received your email. Depending on the
nature of your request you may not receive a response for up to 20 working
days. We will try to respond to your query as quickly as possible.
Ngā mihi
Health NZ, Te Whatu Ora.
Statement of confidentiality: This email message and any accompanying
attachments may contain information that is IN-CONFIDENCE and subject to
legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use,
disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have
received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and
delete this message
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