There’s fear Māori will bear brunt of the Omicron outbreak, with vaccine rates still lagging and tens of thousands not yet eligible for a booster.
It's prompted calls for Māori to access boosters sooner and be given greater home isolation support.
“Nationally, we're still about ten per cent behind in vaccinations [and] with boosters we're running about thirty per cent lower compared to the national population,” said data researcher Rawiri Taonui.
“We need to bring the timeframe for boosters, Māori boosters, back to three months.”
The current interval period between second doses and booster shots is four months.
The aged-based vaccine rollout meant more than 80 per cent of Māori only became eligible for a vaccine in September. That’s because Māori have a much younger population.
Now more than 100,000 Māori are months away from accessing one of the best protections New Zealand has against Omicron, a booster shot.
“They’re still not eligible until a couple of months, three months some of them, especially with the late rush that we got at the end of last year. So, yeah, it’s going to be hard,” said the chief executive of Manurewa Marae Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp.
“We should have always been the priority right across this campaign.”
Te Puea Marae in South Auckland has been preparing for an Omicron outbreak, stocking up on supplies for whānau who will need to isolate at home and creating a dedicated isolation facility on the marae-grounds.
Its chair Hurimoana Dennis said he and his staff were ready to do whatever it took to protect their community.
“If whānau do go down [with Omicron] there's help for them, absolutely. That's what we’re here to do.”
“Once we get notified we’re there quickly and at a distance providing them with kai, with resources, rongoā Māori, rongoā Pākehā, connectivity, and cooked meals.”
The Ministry of Social Development has been alerting the marae and others when whānau in their area are infected and need home isolation support.
But with Omicron cases expected to soar, Hurimoana said they needed more specific information and faster.
“There’s a bit of work that needs to be done around coordinating, how that comes in, the last thing we want to be doing is turning up with Weetbix when they actually need an ambulance.”
Moana Kemp agreed that accessing information from the Ministry and other agencies needed to be better.
“We need more resources to be able to get access to these whānau, we need information sent to us faster, quicker, around who is isolating at home.”
At the peak of the Delta outbreak Māori were the most infected and hospitalised group.
Iwi Chairs Forum spokesperson Mike Smith said many were determined to prevent that from happening again.
“We don’t have to wait for the cavalry to come over the hill. Go out and get vaccinated, practice all the right protocols, wear the masks, and do the social distancing,” he said.
“There's a lot of comorbidities that unfortunately our people have high levels of which is going to put us more at risk than others.”
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