February 26, 2021
South Auckland needs to be immunisation priority
A south Auckland GP says the only thing holding back making South Auckland a priority for Covid-19 vaccinations should be the availability of supply.
Dr Rawiri Jansen, the co-chair of Māori pandemic response group Te Whakakaupapa Urutā, says a lot of people in the region work at the airport or in managed isolation and quarantine facilities, so they and their families will be included in the first groups to be immunised.
It then makes sense to widen protection.
"The only thing that's stopping me going 100 percent all in on that plan is to say we need to notice what sort of amounts of vaccine are coming in because I don't want to do a half pie job with South Auckland, I want to do an excellent job with South Auckland, so we have to be really, absolutely, confident we have the right amount of vaccine coming in to do that," Dr Jansen says.
Other areas that host managed isolation facilities, such as Hamilton, Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch, also need to be up in the queue.
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