18 Oct 2021

Covid-19: Still lots of mahi to do on Māori vaccination rates - Henare

From Morning Report, 6:13 am on 18 October 2021

Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare admits there's still more to do to lift Māori vaccination rates.

Henare told Morning Report work was being done to analyse the Super Saturday vaccination drive results and work out how to carry the momentum on.

Saturday saw 130,002 vaccinations done, but only 44 percent of the Māori population are fully vaccinated.

Henare said he had been speaking to Māori health providers about what to do now.

"Many of them have been vaccinating since March, and they're a bit tired, and they're looking for a different approach towards targeting and using their resource, human resource differently.

"The other one, of course, was mentioned by James Shaw about the kinds of resources that would make sure that we can get into those communities, in particular those far reaching rural communities to make sure that we can have those conversations with them to bring them forward."

He said there are differing opinions about what the target should be.

"I know there's 90 percent, some of the whānau were talking about 95 pecent, one whānau, in fact, last night, said 100 percent.

"Our goal is to get that higher... if we look towards the numbers that come out from Saturday, we've still got a job to do in Te Tai Tokerau. We're also going to need to continue to push that vaccination rate up in South Auckland. So, to your first comment, we've still got lots of mahi to do."

Henare said there was money put aside for Māori vaccinations, and he was surprised to hear about a fundraising drive for vaccination in Tairāwhiti.

"We've allocated for the Māori vaccination program over $80 million, and that's what that money is for.

"So I was very surprised to see that [Givealittle], and that's something that we'll have to remedy very, very quickly."