October 05, 2021
Lower Māori vax rates still risky as lockdown eases
Māori pandemic response group Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā believes there’s a huge risk to Māori in loosening Auckland’s lock down rules.
Co-leader Rawiri McKree Jansen says the Government is in a tough place because of lot of Auckland’s population is now vaccinated and wants to get out of the restrictions, but the Māori vaccination rate is running about four weeks behind.
That’s not because of hesitation or resistance but because Māori advice was ignored when rolling out the programme.
“All of the messaging in the early stages was aimed at the people who were eligible under group 2 and group 3 and that wasn’t us so we haven’t been exposed to good messaging. I think we have had better messaging in the past few weeks and we’ve had Māori providers who have been gassed up to get it done and the results of that work has been showing up,” Dr Jansen says.
With Māori vaccination rates running at over 10,000 a week in Auckland he’s more confident a figure of over 95 percent vaccinated can be reached, but he’d prefer is the risk of transmission was kept down during that period.