A crucial delivery of 150,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine has arrived in New Zealand this week, ahead of schedule. But at the same time, the vaccination of most people living in the Canterbury region has been moved back by at least two months. For the rest of the country, people in group 4 of the vaccination programme will become eligible by the end of July. But those living in Christchurch – New Zealand’s second-largest city – and the Canterbury region will only get their first vaccine dose from mid-September, at the earliest. The region’s COVID-19 response officer Ralph La Salle encouraged everyone “to be patient”.