Prime Minister Jacinda Arden says the Ministry of Health does have plans to ensure Māori are prioritised in vaccination numbers after concerns by health experts that Māori aren't being prioritised.
It comes after the latest figures from the Ministry of Health show Pasifika and Māori people make up only 20 per cent of the people who have received Covid-19 vaccinations so far.
As of midnight on March 23, a total of 41,477 doses of Pfizer vaccine had been administered in New Zealand. Fewer than 9000 of those doses have gone to Pasifika and Māori people.
Arden says the vaccinations administered so far were to border workers and frontline staff.
“What we’ve focused on in the early stages of the vaccine rollout are making sure we’re targeting those who are most at risk at being exposed to Covid-19 so that’s meant we’re focused on people working at the border," she says.
"We’ve actually had a high proportion therefore of people who are residents in Counties Manukau because of the high proportion of border workforce who work there but in these next stages we’ll start rolling out to those who are in at-risk institutions."
But Covid-19 analyst Dr Rawiri Taonui says elderly Pākeha are being prioritised over Māori, yet of the 18 people in New Zealand who have been admitted to intensive care or Covid-19, half have been Māori.
40,000 vaccines for kuia, kaumātua
In response, Ardern says in the next stages the ministry will start rolling out to those who are in at-risk institutions such as aged care facilities.
“We’ve identified that that doesn’t necessarily adequately cover those of our older population from within Māori communities so we’ve provided 40,000 vaccines that will be provided to the likes of Māori providers to make sure that we are reaching our kuia and our kaumātua who might be in the community being cared for but by whānau.”
Māori and isolated areas challenging
Ardern says the ministry is aware that one of the challenges will be to ensure is it fulfilling its obligations to reach Māori, rural communities and isolated parts of New Zealand.
“That challenge will be upon us as we get into the general population. We’re not doing that yet so, at this stage, I would say that really what we are seeing is the proportion of Māori who are working in those areas that we’re targeting at the moment.”
She says plans are in place to work alongside Māori health providers to ensure that the uptake is good.
“We’ve also made sure that we are focusing in on those illnesses that unfortunately do lead to higher rates of hospitalisation, those we call co-morbidities, that if you already have diabetes or coronary issues or things that actually might make Covid-19 worse, those groups will be targeted," she says.
“Unfortunately, we see them overrepresented among Māori so we have got a particular strategy there to make sure we’re reaching into those communities.”