Dear Health New Zealand,

Can you please provide a count of the number of people vaccinated against COVID19 funded by the government of NZ and those who subsequently died of any cause - as measured by MoH record level patient or payment databases.
OIA1) This OIA asks for repeat run of Ticket Reference RT-268 with a revised date range so that updated numbers can be made available to the public.
The previous OIA is here: https://fyi.org.nz/request/25021-number-...
Please provide this as a machine readable CSV or Excel file.
OIA2) For reference, my understanding of the columns provided in the previous OIA are described below. Where there is any conflict please provide a reun of the previous RT-268 dataset and identify where I have misunderstood what Health NZ are supplying.
The following breakdown of each column is required:
Col1) Month of Death - from the first vaccination until the end of June 2024
Col2) Age Band of Patient – 0-20 inclusive, 21-40 inclusive, 41-60 inclusive, 61-80 inclusive, 81-100 inclusive, 101+
Col3) Last COVID-19 dose number (eg 0, 1=1st, 2=2nd, 3=1st booster, 4=2nd booster etc) using a coding scheme used within the MoH
Col4) Days between last vaccination and death – N/A where Last COVID-19 dose number is 0, else each of the following categories should be calculated from the date of the patients’s most recent vaccine: <30 days inclusive, 31 days-90 days inclusive, 91-180 days, 181 days to 365 days, 366 days to 730 days inclusive, 731 to 1095 days inclusive, over 1096 days inclusive.
Col5) Count of people matching (when Grouping on) the above 4 columns
This OIA does not seek any personal or commercial information about patients or suppliers. Where a cell count is less than 5 please mark as “S”. Where a cell count is truely zero please mark this as suich in the dataset.

OIA3) In the Summary tab of RT-268 there is a 3rd Note/Comment in the Summary tab. Please provide a definition for the “Health Service User population - it includes deaths of people (within the requested time period) who interacted with the NZ Health Service.” Specifically what counts as an “interaction with the NZ Heath Service”.
Health NZ may find it easier to provide a succinct answer in terms of the databases queried or the services included/excluded (eg an extract of a table of codes and descriptions for the databases queried).

OIA4) Please provide a simple count of the number of COVID vaccination records in the Pay per Dose system as at the end of June 2024.

OIA5) If this query cannot be easily rerun please provide:
a) A reason why this capability has been deprecated within Health NZ since the last request and
b) Your confirmation that the dataset will be supplied based upon Health NZ’s new capabilities/infrastructure.

A Reasonable OIA with Precedent
This OIA should be possible by using simple queries on the entire datasets of COVID Vax Pay per Dose and National Minimum Dataset of Hospital data - matched using the NHI number.
This OIA does not ask for the creation of any information, just a rerun of a previous request which aggregates a data set the MoH already collects as a normal course of its business.
I am a NZ citizen, resident and taxpayer and am entitled to use the OIA.

Ways of Working
Under the OIA the MoH is obliged to Consult with me if there are any questions or where there may be a way for me to simplify the request so that it is reasonable. This must be done before refusing no matter what your belief is because you do not understand my purpose and what trade offs are possible. However I put it to you ahead of time that it would take a competent SQL developer a short amount of time to rerun this query.

Please provide contact details if you want to talk through any questions verbally, and then we will subsequently document the outcome in writing through this channel. We have used this method before at the request of the Ombudsman so it would seem like a time efficient way to assist the MoH to meet its KPIs for OIAs.
Please raise any questions ASAP and do not leave it until near the end of the 20 working day period to respond.
Yours faithfully,
Chris Johnston