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The first Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to workers in managed isolation and quarantine, and at the other end of the needle were nurses from south Auckland’s Turuki Healthcare.
General practitioner Dr Katrina Kirikino-Cox says it caps a year of primary health services working tirelessly to ensure whānau, hapū and iwi are well protected.
She says the while there is a lot of misinformation being circulated on Māori social media, the truth is the vaccine being used builds on work done to counter the SARS outbreak in 2013.
It teaches the body to identify the protein spikes on the surface of the Covid-19 virus.
"No part of the virus is being injected into our bodies. What (the vaccine) is is a blueprint for our bodies or ourselves to then make this spike protein and what the spike protein does is mount a normal immune response in the body so if we are exposed to Covid-19, our body is already ready and it doesn't become sick, it just fights the virus,"
Dr Kirikino-Cox says she’s proud the first givers and receivers of the vaccine were her Ngāti Porou whanaunga, nurses Rebecca Nelson and Tracey Petersen
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