11,000 people who were healthcare workers were officially exempted from receiving the Covid-19 vaccination in New Zealand. According to a Reuters Fact Check, this is contrary to the claims that top politicians and elites were the ones exempted.
The COVID-19 vaccine exemption was given in 2021-22 to New Zealand’s health and disability workers contrary to the untrue information that 11,000 politicians and elites received COVID-19 vaccine exemptions, including former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in response to an Information Act (OIA) request.
Reacting to the news which again resurfaced and now going viral on social media, Deputy National Director and Director of Planning, Purchasing and Performance of Te Whatu Ora, Matt Hannant, said it was “false and constitute mis/disinformation”.
Hannant also revealed the number of applications for Covid-19 vaccination exemptions received according to the OIA request on Aug. 2, 2023. According to him, 478 total Significant Service Disruption Exemption (SSDE) applications were received, with 103 granted covering approximately 11,005 workers.
The reason for the exemption which lasted between seven days and eight weeks was to enable essential healthcare and disability workers to continue their service while staff completed their mandatory courses of COVID-19 vaccination, he said.
“SSDEs were available to organisations in the health and disability sector, where the lack of vaccinated staff could severely disrupt the delivery of health and disability services, and where the organisation had done all they could to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 illness for consumers, colleagues, and the general public”, he added.
The Covid-19 jabs have been allegedly linked to many deaths of hitherto healthy individuals and have been generally dubbed “die suddenly“, on social media. The fears were further fueled by a video of a Pfizer representative saying that the company’s employees were not vaccinated with the general COVID-19 vaccines sold to the public and that they got a different vaccine for them.
