New Zealand will provide vaccines to the entire population of the country

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden said the government has signed an agreement to purchase an additional 8.5 million doses of Pfizer vaccine.

She said on Monday that the batch of the drug should arrive in the second half of the year.

“Our total order for Pfizer is now 10 million doses, which is enough to get the two doses per 5 million people needed to fully vaccinate against COVID-19,” the Prime Minister said in a statement.

New Zealand began its Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination campaign last month and expects to have its entire population vaccinated by the end of the year.

Since the start of the pandemic, New Zealand has recorded just over 2,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 26 deaths.