WELLINGTON (AP) – Health workers in New Zealand administered a record number of vaccines against the coronavirus on Saturday, when authorities organized a festival aimed at getting more people to be inoculated.
Musicians, sports stars and other celebrities participated in the “Vaxathon” event, which was broadcast on television and the Internet for eight hours. By late afternoon, more than 120,000 people had received injections, eclipsing the one-day record of 93,000 set in August. The event lasted into the night.
The event comes as New Zealand faces its greatest threat since the beginning of the pandemic, with an outbreak of the delta variant spreading through its largest city, Auckland, and beyond.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who spoke to motorists at a vaccination center in Wellington, initially set a target of 100,000 doses for the day, but raised it to 150,000 once the first target was hit.
Ardern also set a target of 25,000 injections for Maori, whose inoculation numbers have lagged behind and who have been hit hard by the most recent outbreak.
National airline Air New Zealand converted a Boeing 787 Dreamliner into a vaccination clinic for the day, issuing boarding passes for the “NZVAX Flight.”
Singer Lorde connected from abroad, saying she couldn’t wait to return to the country to give a concert where everyone danced.
So far, New Zealand health authorities have applied only the Pfizer vaccine.
For much of the pandemic, the country was largely free of the virus after the government successfully eliminated each outbreak with strict lockdowns and contact tracing.
That strategy first failed in August with the outbreak of the more contagious delta variant. Until then, the New Zealand authorities had been slow to vaccinate the population. and now it has been making up ground.
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