November 24, 2021
Pāti Māori sees road block in traffic light move
Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer says Māori feel increasingly left on their own as management of the pandemic moves to the traffic light system.
She says the Government gave up on its elimination strategy when Māori vaccination rates were still 26 percent behind, and there have been 50 consecutive days where Māori have made up the majority of Covid cases.
“What we need to do is see a government that puts in a route, a traffic light system that has a lane for Māori, because we are hearing about the traffic light system and staying on red but Māori are still stuck at the road block government created. We’re still 20 percent behind in the vaccination rates,” Ms Packer says.
There were 215 new community cases of Covid-19 reported today – 181 in Auckland, 18 in Waikato, three in Northland, 12 in Bay of Plenty and one historical case in Canterbury.
Vaccination rates stayed high with 6,496 first doses and 12,384 second doses administered.
To date, 92 percent of eligible people in New Zealand have had their first dose and 84 percent are fully vaccinated.
Eighty percent of Māori have had their first dose and 65 percent their second dose.
As at 9am more than 1.6 million requests for a My Vaccine Pass had been processed.