Children & domestic vaccine passes

How were children affected by domestic vaccine passes in New Zealand

In December 2021 when domestic vaccine passes were implemented they applied to everyone over the age of 12 years and 3 months. However confusion and over zealousness reigned and children were often being asked for them when they were not required or younger than that age.

After children went back to school in early 2022 the use of vaccine passes was also inadvertently prohibiting school children from activities during school hours and sport after school. Early in February the Ministry of Education issued guidance that students doing extracurricular activities such as music lessons or sport during class time were exempt from being asked for a vaccine pass.

However that did not apply to after school time such as sport.

At the time of writing this in early 2023 - just under 80% of 12 to 17 year olds were considered fully vaccinated. Vaccination for 5 to 12 years old started on the 17th of January 2022 and just under 30% are considered fully vaccinated.

Schools were considered essential life saving services so were exempt from asking for vaccine passes. The Ministry of Education clearly had complaints as DPMC presented options for the then Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins attention.

The options paper presented to Hipkins was on ensuring children’s access to extra curricular activities. It’s notable he did not go with the recommended option to prohibit asking anyone under 18 for vaccine pass in favor of the option to just prohibit their use for extra curricular school based activities after school.

On the 24th of February 2022 DPMC reported back on that option to question Hipkins more to understand what he wanted them to do.

They presented both a narrow and broad option to pursue.

Hipkins said no to the narrow option and yes to the broad option which included any activity where a student was representing the school.

The outcome was no student participating in school based activities (within their own school or with other schools) could be asked for a vaccine pass. Which meant that ‘education outside the classroom’ by default also had to be amended to exclude asking for a vaccine pass. Neither option excluded students being asked for a vaccine pass for activities outside school such as club sports which DPMC noted would affect a wide variety of children especially in rural areas. The DPMC briefing also sadly noted:

The briefing goes on to say the Ministry of Health supported the broad option, as did DPMC, but that Sport NZ supported the narrow option.

More legislation was introduced to amend this on the 12th of March 2022 and shortly afterwards in a news article- it looked like Sport NZ had changed their tune publicly on that narrow category in favor of supporting the broad application to not request vaccine passes from children.

Many if not most councils across New Zealand also implemented the use of vaccine passes to access their services such as swimming pools and libraries - how did that affect children?

An OIA request to the Ministry of Education - finally landing a response in August 2022 after months and months - showed the Ministry had received 101 complaints related to the incorrect use of vaccine passes within schools. However they note that is unlikely to be all complaints due to the fact complaints are managed through different offices.