Dear The Treasury,

The NZ Government provided some form of indemnity to the suppliers of the COVID-19 vaccine.

(R1) Can you please provide the value of any liability that has been estimated and/or placed on the government accounts should such indemnity need to be exercised/used.

For example, the NZ Government may need to undertake one or more of the following non exhaustive list of scenarios: (a) fund claims made to ACC that caused it to need to be recapitalised, (b) directly defend or compensate injury victims, or (c) where the suppliers require the NZ Government to defend them in court for claims of negligence, fraud or malfeasance.

(R2) Please provide any Record (eg document/email) that discusses the probability of such a liability clause causing a cost to the NZ Government, and/or any financial estimate of the size of such costs. We can discuss limiting the time period if there are too many documents, but if this discussion is to entered into then you will need to provide a count and/or a list of the document titles from a reasonably undertaken keyword search of your SharePoint or similar system, and provide the keywords used.

(R3) Please provide any advice to the incoming government since the 2023 election night on options and policy recommendations around such a liability. This can include formal documents and notes of Treasury officials in the Ministerial briefings up to the point that this OIA is fulfilled.

Ways of working together:
1) I am a NZ citizen, resident and taxpayer. If you need to verify this to ensure I am eligible to use the OIA then please provide a contact email address by reply email. This direct communication will be used solely to verify eligibility. All other correspondence related to this OIA needs to be through this public fyi.org.nz channel.
2) Where you find there are a large number of documents involved then you are obliged to consult with me under the OIA legislation about whether there is some refinement to the request. Please consult first before an attempt is made to refuse the OIA and I have to approach the Ombudsman. It will save everyone time,
3) Examples provided above are not meant to be exhaustive nor limit this OIA request - they are illustrative only.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear Ministerial Services Inbox [TSY],

Thanks for your reply and the links to the associated documentation from previous OIAs on this topic.

I have some follow up questions:
1) Report No: T2021/2212 File Number: SH-1-6-1-3-3-13-1 "Purchasing Pfizer vaccines for September 2021: indemnity requests for bilateral purchases" Dated 4 September 2021 states on Page 3 Item 14:
"We now have more information on ACC claims to date. As of 7 August, ACC had
received 201 treatment injury claims related to COVID-19 vaccinations. Of these, 67
have been accepted, 39 declined and 95 are still being decided. The majority of
accepted claims are for allergic reactions (predominantly low severity reactions
resulting in treatment costs only, with a very small number of more serious claims).
Based on the same data set (7 August [2021]), ACC has paid just under $20,000 in total for
these claims with the vast majority of claims having no costs paid (note that this
amount does not include any Public Health Acute Services costs). "

Can you provide a Treasury document (or a document from another Agency in your possession, or that refers to a document in another agency's possession). any update to the figures for:
1a) ACC claims
1b) Public Health Acute Service costs - directly from injection, or indirectly like from increased heart attacks/strokes or other acute circulatory conditions induced by the vaccine
1c) Other Public Health costs - eg anything else mentioned as side effects in the clinical trials - eg neurological issues, chronic conditions, turbo cancers and subsequent treatment

1d) All advice and communication to solicit and acquire the ACC estimate mentioned in the Report above - and the emails or documents received in response.

2) A part of The Treasury's answer to R1 and R2 in my original OIA is to refer to a previous document release under OIA dated 3 April 2023.

NZ is relatively unique in the world in that we had no discernible effects from COVID itself, were isolated with a closed border, then administered the vaccine in a COVID free environment. So there is a fairly direct line from adverse effects to the vaccine to government liability - with the only other variable being lock downs (also a government action).

With respect:
i) It is Treasury's job to estimate the evolving nature of financial liabilities
ii) This seems to be a rapidly developing area where discoveries about the range of conditions that can be statistically linked back to the administration of the vaccine in NZ to the wider population.

Could you please provide:
2a) The latest estimate and advice to the government on the estimated liability from the indemnity provisions since 7 August 2021 (excluding the OIA for 3 April 2023 mentioned above).
2b) Forecasts of financial costs in the Health and ACC that factor in the change in burden of disease or rate of death since the administration of the COVID vaccine. These forecasts may or may not have been created or modelled by The Treasury but would have been used in establishing the budget in Health and ACC and the expected future balance sheets.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear Ministerial Services Inbox [TSY],

Thanks for the acknowledgement.

Some further information on excess deaths came in over the weekend; firstly from Health NZ via this OIA:

https://fyi.org.nz/request/25021-number-...

then by subsequent modelling if the excess deaths as a result of the each successive use of the injectable product:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...

My additional questions (alongside my Friday email) are:
- Has Health NZ or the Ministry of Health ever been asked by NZ Treasury to provide their estimate of excess deaths or additional illness burden as a result of these injectable products ? Please provide all such communication and responses.
- Do the numbers in the spreadsheet link above align with NZ Treasuries estimates (eg from ACC or elsewhere - like overseas countries). Eg are they half, double? To answer this question you will need to download and review the spreadsheet model.
- What is the value put on a life lost/death by NZ Treasury from an indemnity point of view? This figure may have come from ACC and may be more than one number (eg more for a younger person than an older person).
- Your previous response to this OIA mentioned a $10m threshold before a certain type of announcement needed to be made. Are there any other thresholds that are relevant in this situation? For example at a compensation value of NZD$100,000 it would take 100 excess deaths to reach NZD$10m. If the excess deaths were higher, the compensation higher (NZD$1m?), or a high illness burden, the $100m-$1b becomes possible very quickly. Is $1b a notifiable event?
- For any additional thresholds, what are the required actions?
- When was the Balance Sheet item for this vaccine/injectable product liability last revised? Please provide the documents/model/spreadsheet that supported each revision and the General Ledger entries (or adjustment to the notes).

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston