January 17, 2022
Māori protecting their own beating Covid
Health Researcher Dr Rawiri Taonui believes a predicted leap in Covid cases hasn’t happened thanks to Māori protecting their own.
Dr Taonui who has been tracking Covid-19 since the first case in March 2020 estimated that as the Auckland border opened and people travelled over the holiday period Māori infections would escalate to 6600.
But this hasn’t happened with daily cases numbers throughout the country below 30 for the past week.
Dr Taonui attributes a big part of the decline in cases to Māori being motivated to protect their whakapapa with figures to support this.
In the four weeks prior to December 6, Māori made up 53.1 per cent, or 1832 of 3447, new cases but over the past five weeks, Māori cases declined on average by 31.1 per cent each week, almost twice the 17.7 per cent decline for all other ethnicities combined.
Dr Taonui says it’s a really huge achievement as both vaccinated and unvaccinated Māori have bought into the big message to be careful, prepared and to have plans in case there was an outbreak.