The Government says trust and hesitancy are now the biggest barriers to people getting vaccinated, and for the most part access to the vaccine has been overcome. But National’s Shane Reti tells political editor Jo Moir that mentality will set some regions up to fail.
Both the Prime Minister and associate health minister Peeni Henare told Newsroom access to Pfizer in remote and isolated parts of the country is no longer the issue when it comes to getting vaccination rates up.
On Monday, Jacinda Ardern said hesitancy was now the biggest challenge to reaching the unvaccinated.
“We’ve worked very hard to overcome the access issue,’’ she told Newsroom.
“Access can mean it’s harder to have those repeat engagements … but I don’t think it’s fair to say there are huge parts of the country we’re just not accessing.’’
“Access isn’t an issue … for every person who has had a bad experience with education, police, justice or health – they are the people holding out now.’’
– Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare
Henare has been on the road for weeks travelling to some of the more remote parts of Northland, Tairāwhiti and the South Island to hear what is holding up some district health boards from reaching 90 percent vaccination targets.
He told Newsroom on Tuesday the number one issue at the moment is trust.
“Access isn’t an issue … for every person who has had a bad experience with education, police, justice or health – they are the people holding out now.’’
Henare says vaccine hesitancy and trust were the biggest barriers, followed by those who are simply anti-vaccination.
While the West Coast of the South Island still had some isolation issues to sort out, he said providers in the North Island had done a good job of getting the vaccine into remote communities.
Ardern visited Tairāwhiti last week and said where horse floats had previously been used, campervans were also in operation now, and there was nothing stopping them getting into remote communities.
National’s health spokesperson, Shane Reti, says Ardern will “leave behind rural and remote communities’’ if she has declared access is no longer a problem.
Reti has been on the ground in Northland in recent weeks speaking first-hand with the hesitant.
“We think that maybe 20 percent of rural communities are still having vaccine access issues, so it’s not just my view on the ground but also the Rural GP Network.” – National’s Shane Reti
He joined the vaccination drive alongside health providers in isolated parts of the region including the Far North and Hokianga.
“This morning I spoke with the CEO of the Rural GP Network, and we were having this discussion, and we’re absolutely convinced that access is still a problem.
“We think that maybe 20 percent of rural communities are still having vaccine access issues, so it’s not just my view on the ground but also the Rural GP Network,’’ he told Newsroom.
If access problems are ignored, Reti says there is no hope of reaching vaccination targets of 90 percent in some communities.
He said the data from the Ministry of Health was clear that more remote parts of Northland were where vaccination rates dropped off, compared with urban centres where rates were much higher.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson agrees with Reti, and says she speaks every day with whānau in Hokianga, and knows the realities and struggles of those sorts of isolated communities.
Asked what she made of Ardern saying access wasn’t an issue, Davidson responded, “I’m not surprised, because they made decisions based on an assumption that access is not going to be an issue’’.
That’s in reference to the setting of a date for the Auckland border to lift and for people to be able to travel into communities with low vaccination rates.
“As someone who is in touch with people on the ground every day in the Hokianga region and hearing what the struggles are, and as an MP who has grown up in rural situations and understands the access and distance issues – that’s the decisions they’ve come to and we strongly disagree,’’ Davidson said.
