Dozens linked to Ma¯ngere church cluster get vaccinated at event
Dozens of Assemblies of God church members tied to the biggest cluster in Auckland’s Covid outbreak were vaccinated yesterday after getting out of isolation.
Many shared, while getting their jabs, how hard it had been watching their church family get sick over the past few weeks and how they had all supported each other.
More than 500 people from 27 Samoan AOG congregations gathered for a conference in Ma¯ngere last month — an innocent event that became a super spreader event for the highly contagious Delta virus.
At least 363 people linked to the August 15 conference have since tested positive for the virus, and many have gone into MIQ or hospital.
But even those who didn’t test positive have been locked down at home for the past two weeks awaiting their test results.
Yesterday many were finally able to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Church spokesman Jerome Mika said around 70 people linked to the church registered for the event, run by South Seas Healthcare Trust in O¯ tara.
Junior Fuimaono, 23, has been at home in isolation for two weeks with his family, including their father who is a pastor at the Panmure branch of the Samoan AOG.
Fuimaono works for South Seas’ Healthline and has been working from home — but it’s been hard with 10 people in his bubble.
He got his first jab along with younger siblings Livingstone, 14, William, 16, and Holy, 18. “It was all right,” he said after getting his vaccination. “I was pretty nervous at the start. I’m not good with needles.”
But he had a message for others who felt that way: “I’d encourage them to get their vaccinations — just to work together and to help out each other. Also through the pandemic, to stand in unity.”
He hadn’t been bothered by some of the racist rhetoric he knew
was out there after the Samoan cluster first hit the news.
“At the end of the day we just pray for them, as our pastors tell us to.”
A Samoan mum of three, who asked not to be named, was getting her first vaccine along with her 14and 15-year-old sons. Her jab was fine, though her boys had been “a bit dramatic” about the needle.
The family attend the Ma¯ngere AOG and were considered close contacts of the original case so have been isolating at home until now.
That’s been tough, she said.
“My kids enjoyed it — for me it was a challenge trying to organise shopping and things like that.”
The boys’ school, Otahuhu College, had been linked to the Delta outbreak, which had meant a delay in devices being delivered.
Her isolation period had finished last week as their last known contact was the church event. “It does get overwhelming especially when you know that a lot of them are your close contacts,” she said. “When you’ve got a good relationship with a lot of the church members it does get more personal — it hits closer to home.”
Getting vaccinated as a group had been “so good”. “Knowing that we are in it together, this does truly illustrate that — we are actually here to support one another, we’re not leaving others in the lurch and not caring. This goes to show that church can be family.”