Call to jab vulnerable first

AMa¯ori health expert is calling on the Government to “taihoa” before beginning the general vaccination rollout, with just 10 per cent of vulnerable groups currently fully vaccinated.

The numbers are even more dire for Maori, with just 7.6 per cent fully vaccinated, compared to the national average of 12.1 per cent.

The first cohort of group 4 — those aged 60 and over — will be invited to book their Covid-19 shots from tomorrow. Meanwhile, just under 180,000 of the roughly 1.7 million people estimated to be in group 3 — those over 65 and vulnerable groups — were fully vaccinated. About 17 per cent had received at least one dose.

Ma¯ori health expert and GP Dr Rawiri McRee Jansen said it didn’t make sense to move on to the general population with group 3 so far behind.

“They need to taihoa [wait]. Supply was challenging for a while and they needed to build up capacity before being able to ramp up.

“I think they could wait a week or two to really reach out and boost the numbers in those vulnerable groups.”

Jansen quit the Government’s expert immunisation advisory group in April, saying he considered it an “overwhelming failure” on his part and the Government’s that the vaccine rollout did not prioritise Maori under 65. Despite expert advice, the Government rejected a recommendation to prioritise vaccinating Maori and Pasifika aged 50 and over, instead keeping the age group priority group at 65 and over for everyone.

With people returning over the next seven days from Australia, and even ships arriving with Covid-19 on board, Jansen said there was a “very real” chance of an outbreak here.

The Government had set the group 4 rollout start date as “from July” back in March. The Health Ministry was accused in May of quietly changing the timeline from “from July” to “from the end of July”, without publicising the change.

It was criticised again when the wording for group 4 was changed from “being vaccinated from 28 July” to “they will be able to book their vaccinations from 28 July”.

National’s Covid-19 spokesman Chris Bishop too said the Government should hold off on the general rollout.

“I want to see jabs in arms but I also want to make sure those who are more vulnerable to Covid-19 get the vaccine first. At the moment the balance is not right.

“I have been very worried for a long time about Delta. The best protection is vaccination and we are the slowest in the western world. That puts us at risk.”

University of Auckland vaccinologist professor Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris said the low rates for group 3 were “concerning”, but she was not sure pausing the general rollout would help.

The rollout was quite uneven across the country, meaning some areas had more capacity to get started than others.

“The focus needs to be on identifying those who need to be vaccinated and reaching out to them, rather than pausing group 4 as in reality the goal is to get as much vaccinated as possible,” she said.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “No-one is going to miss out. This is always the point at which we said our programme would be ramping up.

“We had a million doses delivered in July, the next month [it will be] 1.5 million. We need to continue to book people through the system so we can keep scaling up our programme.

Ministry of Health Covid-19 vaccination programme’s Astrid Koornneef said they expected group 3 vaccinations to increase significantly.

Currently there were more than 835,000 scheduled bookings in Book My Vaccine and many of these would be for group 3, Koornneef said.