In the past week, anti-Pacific racism connected to the Delta community outbreak has been labelled "gutless" and unacceptable by director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Notably, that followed his own department's decision to identify the Auckland church and its congregation's ethnicity at the centre of the outbreak's biggestsubcluster.
Unsurprisingly, those public declarations - which came within days of each other - prompted questions and criticism around the purpose of naming the ethnicity of the church subcluster.
What was the point of that? Why haven't we seen other ethnicities identified? How come they haven't identified the ethnicity of the other big subcluster from Auckland's North Shore? And surely, Bloomfield and his officials knew they were handing fuel to racists with that information.
To recap, this is the third Covid outbreak involving Pasifika communities. In August last year, the family at the centre of that Auckland outbreak was first identified as Pasifika by a news outlet. That spurred huge amounts of racist online abuse and vitriol. Then, the February community outbreak this year centred on the city's Papatoetoe area - which has a high Pacific population. While ethnicity identification and reporting wasn't as pronounced, the outbreak still resulted in the marginalisation of local communities, many of which had members forced to isolate due to potential transmission risk.
Now, I'm all for calling out racists, especially when one of the country's most popular public officials is doing it. But does it really mean much if it's not being used to scrutinise what's actually going on?
Ashley Bloomfield called racism around a Delta subcluster "gutless" - but why was the ethnicity of those at its centre identified by officials in the first place? Photo / Getty Images
Alongside the condemnation, one of the key questions officials like Bloomfield need to address is why information which effectively made an already stressful and highly challenging situation worse for affected Pasifika families was greenlit for public dissemination in such a haphazard way.
Further, and perhaps more importantly, how did putting that information out there impact the effectiveness of the current response.
Since things blew up, the Ministry of Health has altered the type of language being used to describe the outbreak and its subclusters. The name of the church has been removed and, like other subclusters, it's now labelled according to location. Interestingly, media outlets - including this one - have followed the ministry's lead in altered descriptors.
However, it's also become clear there's been fundamental missteps by mainstream health services in the contact tracing process and interaction with the church community.
Jerome Mika, who works for social change agency the Cause Collective, is working alongside Pacific health provider South Seas Healthcare to support the church. He pointed to disconnects around language and culture, and subsequent public exposure of the church, which has hampered trust and faith in mainstream services.
Jerome Mika of social agency the Cause Collective says officials' exposure of the church has hurt trust in mainstream health services. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"A lot of our church community would be English second-language," Mika said.
"So even a mainstream person ringing someone and saying things like 'Are you a close contact or secondary contact' doesn't really work. They're trying to understand what [the contact tracer] is saying, let alone the jargon being used.
"All of that could be perceived as non-responsive or non-co-operative, but we've spoken to the church and they've tried to do everything the government services want and more, including holding closed Facebook live videos to encourage testing," he said.
In the context of ethnicity data, those responsible for health services and the current response must look at why they're not on top of this.
Essentially, if you're going to pinpoint the ethnic group worst affected, then the response and services should be tailored to them – particularly because we know Pasifika, like Māori, are systemically marginalised and failed by mainstream health services.
At the very least, this involves providing language-appropriate services and staff, and ensuring interaction with families is culturally appropriate.
Just this week, a TVNZ story looked at how families with Covid from the church subcluster were being treated at MIQ facilities. After requesting more water because they'd only received one 600ml bottle for 24 hours, families were instructed to either purchase bottles online from grocery retailers or drink from the tap in their bathroom.
Both options failed to take into account the financial difficulty many families are in because they're off work and being forced to isolate, as well as hygiene issues around consuming drinking water situated next to a toilet being used by multiple family members with Covid. Not to mention the stress of dealing with the virus itself.
In addition to this, we've also seen Pasifika families being told to present passports for vaccinations. And while the Government and local DHB have apologised and clarified citizenship is not required for a jab, it's simply another layer to the culturally unaware and irresponsible behaviour being exhibited by those in charge of the Covid-response.
Do better. If you're going to pinpoint Pasifika communities via ethnicity announcements, then make sure services are in place to meet the need and repeated requests/demands for help and co-operation.
Otherwise, drop the ethnic groupings as it's not actually aiding the response and inevitably makes things worse for those suffering the most under Covid.
