Vaccination efforts have ramped up as part of a nationwide Measles Immunisation Week campaign. Photo: RNZ / YouTube
The national childhood vaccination rate has hit 82.6 percent after a week-long push for immunisations.
More than 15,000 measles vaccines were given during last week's immunisation drive - more than twice the number of a typical week.
Vaccination efforts have ramped up as part of a nationwide Measles Immunisation Week campaign.
There are 18 confirmed cases in the current outbreak, with 17 of those no longer infectious.
The latest case was found in Nelson on Sunday. It is unlinked to the others, and health officials say it could mean there is undetected transmission in the community.
Health New Zealand said it's encouraging to see communities rally behind the event. However, it says there is a long way to go before a 95-percent vaccination rate is reached.
Coverage of 95 percent was needed for herd immunity. The 82.6 percent figure is the rate of children immunised at by age of 24 months.
Nikki Canter-Burgoyne, from the National Public Health Service, said the increase in childhood coverage is a significant improvement on where we were a year ago at 75.1 percent.
Canter-Burgoyne said Pacific providers, Plunket nurses and midwives all delivered over and above their normal clinics during the week.
A pop-up clinic in Nelson, where the latest case was found, delivered about 200 MMR doses.
"The main thing that we are trying to do is provide awareness of measles as an illness but also it's an illness that can be prevented though a vaccine," Canter-Burgoyne said.
Measles modelling by the New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science suggested as many as 150 people a week could get infected with measles if an epidemic took hold in New Zealand.
The modelling also found that increasing vaccination rates by five percent could halve the number of hospitalisations in an outbreak.
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