The 90% Project: New Whangārei location of interest as Peeni Henare helps with big push to get more Māori vaccinated in Whangārei's Ōtangarei

Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare (left) with vaccinators from the Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Otangarei Trust. Photo / Michael Cunningham Photo / Michael Cunningham

Anti-vaccination content on social media convinced Jah Bennett not to get a Covid jab - that's until a close relative tested positive for the virus recently.

The Whangārei woman on Thursday rocked up to the Ōtangarei Rugby Club where the Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Ōtangarei Trust held a vaccination drive, with Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare and Whangārei MP Emily Henderson in attendance.

The drive came as a new location of interest was revealed in Whangārei.

While it is not on the Ministry of Health's Locations of Interest website, Whangārei Pak N Save posted on its own Facebook page that it had been informed that it was one.

The post said: We are a location of interest. If you were shopping in store on:
Monday, November 1, between 11.30am and 1.50pm:

Advice from the Ministry of Health (MoH) is that staff and customers are classified as casual contacts. This means anyone in-store at this time should self-monitor for COVID-19 symptoms for 14 days. If symptoms develop, get a test and stay at home until you get a negative test result and until 24 hours after symptoms resolve.

Our teams have been working to increased protocols since Tuesday, August 17 and all these remain in place, which means the store has been cleaned multiple times throughout the day, has implemented increased sanitisation procedures, physical distancing and mandatory mask wearing for customers and staff. These are all aspects which are designed to keep our team and customers safe.

Jah Bennett decided to get the Covid vaccination after a close family member tested positive recently. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Thursday was Bennett's first jab and she urged Māori in Northland to not get sucked in by everything they hear or read on social media about Covid vaccinations.

"Māori listen to too much nonsense. My plea to them is— go and get vaccinated. Get it done."

Her plea follows one new community case in Northland on Thursday, taking the total number of cases in the region to 15. The case is a close contact of the two previously reported cases near Pukenui and had been isolating at home.

Bennett's nephew's wife is Mangamuka mum Rosaline Puhi, who recently outed herself as a Covid positive case, saying she was nervous about the response she would get when she decided to reveal to her rural Far North community that it was she and her daughter who had tested positive for Covid-19.

"That encouraged me to have the vaccine, plus the hesitancy initially because of a lot of things including what I read on social media. Now I want to do it," Bennett said.

Leah Brown and friend Aaron Bartlett came from Ngunguru to get their second jabs on Thursday.

"I am trying to get my family to get their jabs but it's hard. My nieces and nephews who are getting older think if they get a jab, they won't be able to get pregnant," Brown said.

She said unlike them, her sister who has 10 children found it difficult to get to a vaccination clinic for her jab.

Young people she has met were not enthusiastic— a mentality she said that needed to change if the region was to up the vaccination rate among Māori.

Trust operations manager Janine Kaipo said among people vaccinators were targeting were those that were still thinking about the pros and cons because of a lot of misinformation about the vax.

Heke Kopa was among those who turned up at a Covid vaccination drive at Otangarei Rugby Club. Photo / Michael Cunningham

A lot of elderly kuia and kaumātua in Ōtangarei have been immunised, she said, because they knew what has happened before in life, whereas some have had family experiences during other pandemics.

She estimates between 400 and 600 people in Ōtangarei are unvaccinated.

Apart from one or two days a week when they have big drive-ins, Kaipo said people were being vaccinated daily, while nurses were also going door-to-door.

The trust hasn't set a vaccination target, saying it wanted to be consistent in what it did rather than chase a number.

"A lot of people want to know what's in the vaccine so our nurses are very good at breaking down what the ingredients are and giving them the information and they are very surprised because it's not what they thought they knew. A lot of them are being convinced by younger family members."

Janine Kaipo wants to keep vaccinating people consistently rather than chasing a targeted percentage. Photo / Michael Cunningham Photo / Michael Cunningham

Henare said the Government, in partnership with health providers, would throw everything to ensure 90 per cent of Māori in Northland were vaccinated.

"The vast majority of Māori who we gonna get vaccinated have already so now we are reaching out to those whānau and you'll see the numbers are looking positive. I was here three to four weeks ago and it was a very different picture."

He said one of the reasons Māori lag behind in getting vaccinated was to do with trust.

"When you've got communities like this who've had bad experiences with health, education, law and order, police they just don't trust Governments and central institutions which is why Te Hau Āwhiowhio and others are the kinds of people we need to reach out to."

Henare said people needed to make a decision now what Christmas would look like for them in terms of vaccination rates.

"I suspect we'll still be vaccinating some of our people into the new year, probably into June and then by the end who knows, we could be having to do this all over again with booster shots or our children 5-plus, so we've got to make sure the infrastructure we use now to grow those rates must be the same we use on an ongoing basis."

There were 1833 Covid tests taken across Northland on Wednesday and 1552 vaccinations, including 443 first doses.