A navy ship carrying the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine is now on its way to Tokelau and the northern Cook Islands.
It is carrying enough doses for the eligible populations of Tokelau and Palmerston Island.
The offshore patrol vessel with 76 crew will be covering 5000 nautical miles to deliver the vaccine on behalf of the Ministry of Health.
A 20ft container will be carrying two freezers full of more than 2200 vaccines for the three-week trip.
It will take six days to get to Tokelau first, before it arrives in Palmerston Island two days later.
Lieutenant Commander Phillip Davies said the drop-offs would be contactless.
"So essentially the helicopter will land on the island and we have an appointed person that will basically be met at a distance and they'll drop it off, retrieve the data logger to ensure the compliance of the cold chain for the vaccines being dropped off, and then recover it and come back to the ship."
Davies said it would be all hands on deck.
"As for any ship, there's a number of different personnel - there's watchkeepers on the bridge driving the ship, and keeping us navigationally safe, engineers running the machinery and electronics."
Associate minister of health and foreign affairs Aupito William Sio was thrilled because the roll-out had been a long time coming.
"We started this discussion last year and we started Zoom-ing in with ministers and senior health officials immediately after the Christmas break. So I'm just relieved that we're able to do this. I'm also relieved that nothing bad has happened with Cook Islands."
Once the vaccine arrives on their shores, just one public health nurse has been sent over to help vaccinate. A team of vaccinators on the island will take care of the rest.
It is one of the ministry's most remote vaccine deliveries.
Sio said because the islands were so remote, training was done differently.
"The training has been done all virtually. But we do have a staff member who's at the moment in quarantine in Samoa, she's of Tokelau heritage, a public health nurse [with] many years of experience in our public health sector.
"So by the time the ship arrives on Tokelau, she will also be released from Samoa [quarantine] and she'll be able to provide the support."
Sio said officials were confident the uptake on the vaccine would be strong for those that were eligible, after working on getting the right messaging through months in advance.
"In my Zooms with the ministers and with the officials here, we're pretty confident and we've been sharing a lot of our messages in the Pacific Island languages so that they can better understand why this is important. It's about keeping everybody safe."
After the team delivers the vaccinations to Palmerston Island, they will have a pit stop in Rarotonga to refuel before journeying back to New Zealand waters.
