Coronavirus: Hundreds of border workers are missing COVID-19 tests

The Auditor General's office has raised serious concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, saying scaling up to offer a jab to every Kiwi by the end of the year will be a huge challenge.

And Newshub can reveal that hundreds of border workers are missing their tests - our first line of defence against COVID-19. 

Four months ago, the first Pfizer vaccine touched down in New Zealand and on Wednesday it was revealed we've just done our 1 millionth jab.

But the Auditor-General's office has warned vaccinating the team of five million is a big ask. 

"Over the second half of the year, they need to do 7 million or over 7 million doses - that's a huge scale up and a really, really big challenge," senior performance auditor Kate Williams told the Health Select Committee. 

That means vaccinating 75,000 people - the entire population of Rotorua - every single day for about seven weeks. We're currently doing about 20,000.

"I am still confident every Kiwi will be offered a vaccine," said COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. 

The Government's spending watchdog was questioned on Wednesday about its critical report on the vaccine rollout, and a month after publishing it, they still have concerns. If there are any hiccups in the rollout - like an outbreak scare in the capital for example - there's no plan B.

"Some of the key things we'd expect to see is some idea of some of the things that can go wrong," said Williams. 

And one of the ways to prevent things going wrong is a watertight border.

But yet again there are holes. Government data shows that last month, on average, 400 border workers missed their tests. Officials say most of these were mix-ups with names or because of the Waikato DHB hack.

"It would be down to a handful," an official said on Wednesday. 

But COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins agrees it's not good enough, saying the team working on that has been "beefed up". 

National's COVID-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop says it's not good enough. 

"It's the first line of defence and there's holes in the system."

The Border Worker Testing Register has made it easier to track down who's missing tests, which is great but it's also shown up the fact that they're not being tested as much they should - and the Government is not moving fast enough to fix it.