Poor health treatment behind vaccine lethargy

Ellyce McLeod Poor health treatment behind vaccine lethargy

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A Māori researcher says decades of poor treatment by the health system is hampering the roll out of Covid vaccines among Māori.

Rawiri Taonui estimates about 41 percent of Māori have received at least one dose of vaccine but only 13.6 percent are fully vaccinated.

He says estimates of Māori participation have been wrong so far, in part because of factors such as the effect of vaccine misinformation and also the cumulative impact of colonisation and the extent of distrust in the Māori community of the Pākehā health system.

“Younger Māori, because they are more online, they are probably a bit vulnerable to vaccine misinformation but one of the things we are seeing is quite mature age, professional, reasonably educated Māori also being hesitant and also being distrustful of the system and I think that’s caught pretty much most of us off guard,” Dr Taonui says.

As the vaccination rates for European and Asian people nears the maximum, there may be more room for Māori health provides to try different approaches such as no book vaccination centres and door to door campaigns.

For the third day in a row there were 20 new community cases of Covid-19 confirmed.

Just five or 25 percent of yesterday’s cases have exposure events where they were infectious while outside their bubbles.

There were 40 cases in Auckland hospitals, including six in ICU or on ventilators.

There were just 4750 tests done yesterday, compared with a rolling seven-day average of 13,488, and 38,710 vaccine doses.

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