It was the last weekend people could have their first vax and still have the necessary three-week period between doses before Christmas.

Many vax centres were in South Auckland, where 90 percent of Pacific people have had their first dose and 80 percent are fully vaccinated.

Many factors - particularly church leadership - helped South Auckland's vaccine-hesitant come forward.

Seeing the effects of the virus first-hand and knowing many people who have been vaccinated safely also encouraged people - as did some outright bribery in the form of prizes and gifts.

Among the centres people flocked to was one hosted by 25 Catholic churches. They came together for a big pop-up event in Mangere, involving youth groups and 120 volunteers.

Another centre was the Tokaikolo 'Ia Kalaisi church in Mangere Bridge, which has been considered anti-vax.

It is, in fact, pro-vax. So much so, it surveyed its members' vax status (most are vaxxed), strategically developed an events' programme to encourage its remaining 200 unvaccinated members to get their first dose - and at the same time reframed the anti-vax perceptions of the church.

At that event church leaders and members showed their support for getting vaccinated. They lined the entrance way to the church, waving Tongan, Niuean, Fiji and Cook Islands flags; music blasted as people waited in line for their vaccination.

Senior church minister Viliami Mapapalangi, who was on MC duties thanked church members as they left after being vaccinated.

"How I'm feeling, I know God is here. It's a great blessing, it's a great privilege for all of us to be here to be support.

"It's very emotional for us, I'm really happy seeing how the Tongan people come to support what the government needs for everyone here. It's a blessing."

Another church leader said: "These are the real hard to reach ... and to get such an opportunity is actually quite significant. It sends a strong signal, that it's actually safe, and you get vaccinated to keep you safe, and your family, but also our village as well."

Early on, he said some members of the church had used scripture to dismiss and discredit the work of the vaccinations.

Today, leaders and church members wear shirts with the scripture 'Aisea 1: 19-20' and the word 'Talangofua'.

"When the church leadership decided on a name for the programme, they came up with the name 'Talangofua' which literally means obedience. The verse … talks about being obedient to your leadership," he said.

Auckland vaccination programme director Matt Hannant is still urging people who haven't braved the vax to give it a go and get vaxxed for Christmas. With the Auckland border opening up on December 15, people would be counting down the days until they could be reunited with whanau for Christmas.

"Let's make this Christmas as safe as possible for our loved ones by getting both doses in time for the festivities. This is the last weekend to ensure that you'll be fully vaccinated before the holiday season," he says.

Source

• NZ Herald
• RNZ
• Image: RNZ

This was, after all, the same Brian Tamaki whose Destiny Church followers wanted to reclaim Christchurch "for Jesus" in the immediate aftermath of the 2019 terrorist attacks. And who blamed the Christchurch earthquakes on "gays, sinners and murderers".

Those familiar with the branch of modern Christianity known as Pentecostalism would not have been surprised at all. Tamaki's Destiny Church is part of the fastest-growing religious movement in the world, with an estimated 500 million adherents.

Today the average Pentecostal is as likely to be Nigerian, Fijian, Korean or Brazilian as they are to be British, American, Australian or Kiwi.

Aotearoa New Zealand is just one of many places Pentecostalism is flourishing. As well as the more prominent churches such as Destiny, City Impact, the Assemblies of God (AOG) and Elim, a host of smaller congregations exist throughout the country.

Here and elsewhere, Pentecostals' steadfast assertion that the raw power of the Holy Spirit will prevail over the principalities of darkness has run up against the cultural and environmental realities of the modern world.

A record of resistance

Nowhere is this more obvious than in their responses to COVID-19. As nation-states have rolled out public health measures, Pentecostals have seemed unwilling and unable to accept epidemiological explanations and strategies.

Tamaki's actions are the tip of an iceberg of global resistance. Pentecostals have been at the forefront of legal pushbacks against gathering restrictions and insisted only the second coming of Christ would force churches to close their doors.

They have proclaimed COVID cannot survive in the bodies of the faithful, declared a link between the virus and 5G mobile technology, and maintained the pandemic is God's yardstick for distinguishing his loyal servants from pretenders.

While these claims and interpretations can appear outlandish and dangerous, they are not entirely incomprehensible. Rather than view them as nonsense, it is more helpful to see them as a different kind of sense altogether.

Miracles and wonder

Specifically, Pentecostal values are a religious response to the pandemic and a spiritualisation and demonisation of the virus. This goes directly to the Pentecostal obsession with the Holy Spirit.

Pentecostalism is defined, above all, by its intense experientialism. More than any other Christian variant, it is concerned with saturating human existence in otherworldly power.

The Pentecostal vocabulary is not one of ritual, liturgy or structure, but of ecstasy, surprise, miracles and wonder.

From this standpoint, any stricture, rule or earthly imposition that impedes a life in the Spirit is, by default, suspect and anathema. This sets up an overall opposition between the spiritual and the worldly that helps define the difference between good and evil or God and Satan.

Defining Pentecostalism

For the devoted Pentecostal, everything is either one or the other, and to be on the side of the world is to collaborate with the enemy. Several features of this theology directly shape Pentecostal responses to COVID-19.

Triumphalism: Pentecostals are fearless combatants in a spiritual war against Satan. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate weapon in this charge, providing absolute confidence in a Biblically preordained victory. With its long shadow of sickness and fear, COVID-19 bears the Devil's signature.

Framed as an active demonic force, the virus is something that should not - must not - be feared. The triumphalism determined by a total faith in the Spirit to conquer evil immediately establishes an ethos that spurns caution, regulation and withdrawal.

Deliverance and healing: The former expels demonic forces threatening well-being, while the latter cleanses a diseased body affected by those same powers. These religious tools are brought to bear against the pandemic, warding off the Satanic viral threat while healing the afflicted. Logically, vaccination becomes unnecessary, misguided and a betrayal of faith.

Tribulation: Pentecostals are deeply concerned with the end of human history as the precursor to Christ's return and the establishment of God's paradisical kingdom. The Tribulation is a seven-year nightmare of evil and suffering featuring the rise of a nefarious "new world order".

Within this end-times scenario, all humanity is branded with the mark of the beast, a process authorised by Satan. An apocalyptic plague and Satanic mandates for vaccination provide further prophetic justification for a pro-healing, anti-vaccination position.

The Kingdom: Pentecostals are not huge fans of worldly entities and human rules. They prefer divine authority, spiritual inspiration and Biblically sanctified morality. The Kingdom of God is juxtaposed with the debased platforms of government and capitalism (even if countless Pentecostals embrace a divinely sanctioned materialism).

Translated into the pandemic context, the continual legislative and policy directives of the government are, by virtue of their human origin, tainted with iniquity. As always, paramount trust must be placed in the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

Faith and science

It may be tempting to see Pentecostalism as its own worst enemy by denying the science and leaving its followers vulnerable to epidemiological catastrophe.

But it is also a relatively young branch of Christianity and not necessarily uniform in its beliefs. As has been observed elsewhere, "medical science and divine healing […] have never been considered mutually exclusive by the entire movement".

The question therefore becomes, can Pentecostalism reach a détente with the world, as mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Catholic churches have done?

It would seem the tide can be turned, even if compelled by tragedy. For example, after the death of one of its congregants, the Pentecostal church at the centre of the largest sub-cluster of Auckland's current Delta outbreak embraced vaccination, having initially denied its validity.

This is a pattern now being repeated across many pockets of the Pentecostal world, albeit within a church still fixated on spiritual dynamism and miraculous cures. For now, however, it may take more than faith in worldly reason to persuade Brian Tamaki and his flock that vaccines and lockdowns are a blessing and not a curse.

• Fraser Macdonald is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Waikato
• First published in The Conversation

Last month the government announced details of its Covid-19 Protection Framework, involving the roll-out of a 'traffic-light' system once all DHBs hit 90 percent full vaccination rates.

Under this system, churches with over 100 people can only meet under the orange setting without restrictions if vaccine certificates are used. Without a certificate, only 50 people can gather one meter apart.

Green allows the same numbers as orange for vaccine certificate gatherings. However, only up to 100 people one metre apart can gather without the mandate.

Under the red setting, churches using certificates can have 100 people, one metre apart; without vaccine certificates only 10 people can gather with social distancing.

Among the people speaking to media about the vaccine certificates and how the mandate affects churchgoers was New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre director John Kleinsman (pictured).

He says while churches are generally safe places, open to all without prejudice, that was far from clear cut during a pandemic.

"It is tricky and we've never been in this place before. Churches should be safe places and at the same time they should also be places that are open to all people without prejudice or any discrimination."

Kleinsman says some people would feel unsafe and would not want to come to church if non-vaccinated people were present, while some would feel excluded if non-vaccinated people were unable to attend.

"Ethical dilemmas inevitably involve balancing competing values and rights and this is a case in point, the ability and autonomy of people to choose and of course we respect people's conscience.

"How do you balance competing rights, that's what we're debating and struggling with and reflecting on at the moment?"

Kleinsman says this the Nathaniel Centre is providing advice to Bishops ahead of a meeting this week.

He says they would be leaning on important values to guide parishes.

"Within our own Catholic social teaching, we have principles to assist in those dilemmas," he says.

"In this case, I would say that the key principles that apply would be the principle of the common good, the principle of the option for the most vulnerable, the principle of solidarity and as well the dignity of the individual, which for me includes the right to be protected from harm from other people."

Religious historian Peter Lineham says he wonders why we can't allow exemptions for this vaccine.

He says churches are having to make the difficult decision of whether they will admit non-vaccinated people.

Although no applications for religious exemptions to vaccine mandates have been made yet, the West Coast's Gloriavale may be the first to apply for an exemption of the vaccine mandate for its teachers.

Church leaders from most denominations report actively encouraging their parishes to support the government's vaccine programme. Most are also still discussing whether to use vaccine certificates.

Source

• Newstalk
• RNZ
• Image: NewsHub

With this in mind, there are many people who see universal vaccination as the only way to bring the pandemic to an end, often invoking the mantra of "follow the science."

As a slogan it would seem to have a certain appeal, but the evidence suggests that the catchphrase has not actually been particularly effective at increasing vaccination rates.

After all, a significant portion of the population has still refused to be vaccinated and indeed is skeptical of the science.

I am the director of the Vatican Observatory.

That means that I am both a scientist and an official within the Catholic Church.

I am well familiar with both scientific and clerical authority. And while I am all in favour of vaccinations, I also find myself troubled by that phrase, "Follow the science."

It implies that the authority of science is infallible.

But, of course, science is not infallible.

Yes, the vaccine prevents the disease for the overwhelming majority of people who receive it, and even for breakthrough cases, it reduces the severity of the disease.

But the vaccines are not perfect.

Fully vaccinated people can, and do, come down with Covid—sometimes with serious effects, even if this happens rarely.

To the vaccine sceptic, the fact that such failures happen at all suggests not only that the vaccine is not perfect, but it also gives credence to their fear that "following the science" blindly can be dangerous.

As much as we hate to admit it, that fear of blind trust in science does have an element of truth to it.

Sometimes "the science" is wrong.

I am a scientist, and I can name any number of papers I have written that have turned out to be embarrassingly incorrect.

But more so, there are times in our history when "the science"—or at least how it is presented to the general public—has turned out to be not merely imperfect but horrifyingly wrong.

The popularizers of science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—people like H. G. Wells, Alexander Graham Bell and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—all promoted the idea of eugenics.

They insisted that we could perfect the human race by eliminating supposedly "inferior" people.

It was an idea so self-evident to these figures that anyone (including the church) who opposed it on moral grounds was seen as dangerously backward.

As a result of the popular acceptance of eugenics, it is estimated that 70,000 women, mostly minorities, were forcibly sterilized in the United States during the 20th century.

Such programs continued well into the 1970s. And, of course, this was also the logic of Nazi death camps.

Because popular science had been so wrong in this case, does it logically follow that science should never be trusted?

Obviously not.

For one thing, science eventually got it right; indeed, eugenics had been long discredited in scientific circles decades before the fad of forced sterilizations was finally halted. (Of course, even if the science had been true, forced sterilization still would have been immoral.)

One could argue that the villains in this tragic situation were the popularizers, who succumbed to the temptation of promoting oversimplified views of the science in question.

But that does not excuse the scientists who got it wrong in the first place.

It goes deeper than that.

The fight over "following the science" is really a fight over the reliability of authority in general.

At the end of the day, both those who promote science and those who disdain it are looking for certainty in an uncertain universe.

It is an almost Calvinistic intolerance of error; the world is black and white, and "failure is not an option."

If only we could be certain, we tell ourselves, if only we could be without doubt.

You only become a scientist when you are able to look at something you thought you understand and they say, "Hmm, that's not right."

The irony is that science itself is actually a process based on doubt and error, and of learning how to analyze that error.

In science, it is essential to know that you don't know all the answers: That is what drives you to work to learn more and to not be satisfied with what you already know.

Sadly, though, that is not how we teach science.

In the introductory courses at least—and how many people ever get past the introductory courses?—"success" in your science class means getting the same answer as you find in the back of the textbook.

True, doing such rote problems in science is probably the fastest way to immerse a student into a sense of what it feels like to practice science successfully.

In the same way, you have to learn to play the scales before you get to play the music. But scales are not music, and getting the "answers" is not science.

You only become a scientist when you are able to look at something you thought you understood and then say, "Hmm, that's not right." Until you can do that, you will not even know to start looking for what went wrong.

In science, failure isn't an option; it is a requirement.

Doubt plays a role parallel to that of faith.

The writer Anne Lamott summarized it perfectly when she said that the "opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty."

It is not just that if we did not have doubts we would not need faith.

It also means that doubt is the essential driver that keeps us looking for God and will not let us be satisfied with just accepting, or rejecting, the stuff we learned when we were kids—like in science.

Accepting doubt, accepting the inevitability of error, also means accepting a tolerance for other people even when they have been wrong.

I still enjoy the stories of H. G. Wells, I still admire much that Oliver Wendell Holmes did as a chief justice, and I still use Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, even as I abhor those people's views on eugenics.

I can accept that heroes sometimes are also sinners, even serious sinners.

Science and religion seem to be in conflict only if you think of both of them as closed books of rules and facts, each demanding infallible credulity.

But that's not religion; that's fanaticism. And that's not science; that's scientism.

Science does not give you the perfect truth.

But it can tell you the odds.

Science and religion seem to be in conflict only if you think of both of them as closed books of rules and facts, each demanding infallible credulity.

We trust the vaccine because it vastly improves your odds of not getting sick. (The trouble is, of course, that most of us are lousy at understanding how odds work, which is why casinos and lotteries are so successful.)

There is a further irony, of course, seen in some of the vaccine-skeptic crowd.

Just after they announce that they are too clever to be fooled by the experts, they then start self-dosing with some utterly inappropriate and dangerous drug that they heard about on the internet.

The same folks who urge us not to be sheep are the next minute trying to cure Covid by taking drugs meant for sheep.

Why would anyone trust their lives to some random site they found on the internet?

Why would we reject religion in favour of a philosophy we can read on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker?

We should recognize the temptation.

It is the allure of gnosticism, a desire to embrace "secret knowledge."

This is an urge that has been around since the Church Fathers in the second and third century, and indeed since the ancient Greeks performed esoteric rites.

But rather than heaping scorn on those who fall prey to this urge, perhaps we might want to look at where we have gone wrong in the way we teach our science and our religion.

If we promote "follow the science" with the implication that the scientists deserve to be followed because they are smarter than you, aren't we just feeding a dangerous fallacy?

If your sense of self-worth comes from thinking that you are smarter than the average person, that you are the smartest guy in the room, then a great temptation arises to never agree with the consensus of the majority—never to be a "sheep."

If you are smarter than everyone else, then presumably you must know something that no one else knows.

And if your beliefs come at a high cost—for example, because of the scorn you endure for holding them—then you become so invested in your peculiar stance that you can't ever admit you were wrong.

And so I think this comes to the root issue: the identification of intelligence or cleverness as a criterion of superiority.

Certainly, the history of the church should tell us otherwise, if only we were paying attention.

There were many learned theologians in the 19th century, most of them at each other's throats; nearly every one of them is long forgotten in the history of the church.

Instead, the saints of that era were people like Bernadette; Francis de Sales; and Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower."

The simple people who were not concerned so much with scoring theological points as experiencing God.

Trying to understand the universe, from astronomy to medicine, is only possible when it is a response to love.

It depends on loving the unlovable; trusting even when trust is uncertain; willing to forgive and learn even from those who have gone wrong in the past; living with uncertainty, even as we learn to trust.

After all, the only certain thing in life is God's love and mercy—and our need for both.

• Guy Consolmagno, S.J., is the director of the Vatican Observatory.
• First published in America Magazine. Reproduced with permission of the author.

While there's no evidence any of the COVID-19 vaccines cause problems with fertility, becoming severely ill from the disease has the potential to do so, reproduction experts say, making vaccination all the more important.

"There is evidence to suggest that infection with SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to impact both male fertility, female fertility, and certainly the health of a pregnancy of someone infected," said Dr Jennifer Kawwass, a reproductive endocrinologist and associate professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

"And there is simultaneously no evidence that the vaccine has any negative impact on male or female fertility."

Researchers have been studying the effects of COVID-19 on the human reproductive system since the beginning of the pandemic.

While there's no evidence that COVID-19 can be sexually transmitted, research suggests that the cells in the reproductive system are feasible targets for the virus, because they carry some of the receptors the coronavirus must bind to in order to enter cells.

The idea that a virus could cause infertility is not unprecedented.

"We do have historic evidence that there are certain viruses that are more likely to impact either male or female fertility," Kawwass said.

For example, human papillomavirus (HPV), hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV infections have all been linked to decreased fertility.

It's unclear, however, if a respiratory virus, like the coronavirus, could have the same effect.

But the fact that male and female reproductive organs have the receptors the COVID-19 virus targets means it's certainly plausible that the virus could cause fertility issues, she said.

Moreover, the symptoms of COVID-19 — primarily fever higher than 102 degrees Fahrenheit for at least three days — are known to cause fertility issues, especially in men.

According to a recent review paper published in the journal Reproductive Biology, moderate to severe COVID-19 infections have caused decreased sperm count, testicular inflammation, sperm duct inflammation and testicular pain in men of reproductive age.

Although not considered common complications of COVID-19 in particular, these effects are often associated with reduced fertility, and are enough to lead scientists to hypothesize that COVID-19 may cause fertility issues in men, warranting further research in this area.

Dr Eve Feinberg, a reproductive endocrinologist and associate professor at Northwestern University, works with patients with fertility issues every day.

She said although she doesn't think the virus itself directly leads to infertility, she's noticed that some of her male patients have experienced infertility due to low sperm counts after having COVID-19.

"But, it's too early and very hard to say whether or not they had a low sperm count prior to COVID infection," she added.

The symptoms of the disease, rather the virus itself, maybe the culprit when it comes to causing fertility issues.

"Any infection, particularly an infection that involves fever, can affect sperm production and can affect ovulation," said Dr Marcelle Cedars, reproductive endocrinologist and director of the University of California, San Francisco, Center for Reproductive Health.

There's no evidence that COVID would be different from that, she said.

Most of the research on COVID-19 and its effects on fertility have focused on men, but few studies in women have found that neither the virus nor its symptoms seem to have a major impact on menstruation or hormone cycles. Continue reading

It's a question many are considering. The conversation around mandatory vaccinations is heating up.

Last week, the Government announced digital vaccination certificates, which should be introduced by November. They will be available either in digital form on smartphones, or can be downloaded and printed out.

The general idea is for these certificates to be used as a tool in high-risk settings including large events and festivals. They won't be needed in places like supermarkets or essential health services,however.

Further detail about the certificates, including where they'll be needed and which places are exempt is still being decided. At present, for instance, the Government is consulting on their use in places like hospitality.

Auckland Church Leaders Group Chair Jonathan Dove says vax certification is a contentious issue.

"We are in a very challenging situation because churches tend to meet indoors and we sing and hug - and those are all things that spread the virus."

Nonetheless, churches should be assisting not dividing in the fight against Covid-19, Dove says.

"Churches need to take the virus seriously and should be proactively implementing health measures.

"Yes, we are in a difficult position, but that's because of the virus, not the Government."

Dove, the Senior Pastor at Auckland's Grace City Church, says they are looking at options around how church services will be held once the Government deems it is safe to do so again.

This includes exploring whether to provide separate services for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, he says.

St Peter's Anglican Church in Wellington hasn't yet settled on its response to the vexing vax question.

Reverend Stephen King says it's like trying to balance along a tightrope.

"We are encouraging people to get vaccinated, but we don't want to make it a pre-requisite in order to belong to the church."

At the same time King says churches must work with reality.

"Churches now need to find a way to meet the needs of those who are jabbed and those who refuse to be, because the risk of Covid is out there."City Imact

"There are some churches that are quite happy to tell people what to do, but we are having that conversation now with our members and leadership."

City Impact Church, which has churches across New Zealand, says it takes no official nor ethical stance on the use of vaccines.

Its leader Peter Mortlock was recently called out for encouraging members to attend Brian Tamaki's Destiny Church-led, 2000-strong anti-lockdown protest.

Mortlock says City Impact supports and tries to comply with all public health measures, but strongly objects to limiting in-person church attendance based on vaccination - or any other status.

This would have a major impact on the mental, emotional and social health and wellbeing of thousands of City Impact Church members, he says.

Density Church's Tamaki, however, will fight charges laid against him in relation to the anti-lockdown protest.

Source

• NZ Herald
• Image: Eventfinda

While the government denies it, others clearly believe it is at least a possibility.

The uncertainty is troubling. If elimination fails or is abandoned, it would suggest we have not learnt the lessons of history, particularly when it comes to our more vulnerable populations.

In 1918, the mortality rate among Maori from the influenza pandemic was eight times that of Europeans.

The avoidable introduction of influenza to Samoa from Aotearoa resulted in the deaths of about 22% of the population.

Similar observations were seen in subsequent influenza outbreaks in Aotearoa in 1957 and 2009 for both Maori and Pasifika people. These trends are well known and documented.

And yet, despite concerns we could see the same thing happen again, there have been repeated claims that an elimination strategy cannot succeed.

Some business owners, politicians and media commentators have called for a change in approach that would see Aotearoa "learn to live with the virus".

This is premature and likely to expose vulnerable members of our communities to the disease.

Abandoning the elimination strategy while vaccine coverage rates remain low among the most vulnerable people would be reckless and irresponsible. In short, more Maori and Pasifika people would die.

Far better will be to stick to the original plan that has served the country well, lift vaccination coverage rates with more urgency, and revise the strategy when vaccination rates among Maori and Pasifika people are as high as possible - no less than 90%.

Least worst options

After 18 months of dealing with the pandemic, it's important to remember that Aotearoa's response has been based on sound science and strong political leadership.

The elimination strategy has proved effective at home and been admired internationally.

Of course, it has come with a price.

In particular, the restrictions have had a major impact on small businesses and personal incomes, student life and learning, and well-being in general.

Many families have needed additional food parcels and social support, and there are reports of an increasing incidence of family harm.

The latest Delta outbreak has also seen the longest level 4 lockdown in Auckland, with at least two further weeks at level 3, and there is no doubt many people are struggling to cope with the restrictions.

The "long tail" of infections will test everyone further.

There is no easy way to protect the most vulnerable people from the life-threatening risk of Covid-19, and the likely impact on the public health system if it were to get out of control. The alternative, however, is worse.

We know Maori and Pasifika people are most at risk of infection from Covid-19, of being hospitalised and of dying from the disease. Various studies have confirmed this, but we also must acknowledge why - entrenched socioeconomic disadvantage, overcrowded housing and higher prevalence of underlying health conditions.

More than 50% of all new cases in the current outbreak are among Pasifika people and the number of new cases among Maori is increasing. If and when the pandemic is over, the implications of these socioeconomic factors must be part of any review of the pandemic strategy.

Lowest vaccination rates, highest risk

Furthermore, the national vaccination rollout has again shown up the chronic entrenched inequities in the health system.

While the rollout is finally gaining momentum, with more and better options offered by and for Maori and Pasifika people, their comparative vaccination rates have lagged significantly.

Community leaders and health professionals have long called for Maori and Pasifika vaccination to be prioritised.

But the official rhetoric has not been matched by the reality, as evidenced by our most at-risk communities still having the lowest vaccination coverage rates in the country.

Te Ropu Whakakaupapa Uruta (the National Maori Pandemic Group) and the Pasifika Medical Association have repeatedly called for their communities to be empowered and resourced to own, lead and deliver vaccination rollouts in ways that work for their communities.

Te Ropu Whakakaupapa Uruta have also said Auckland should have remained at level 4, with the border extended to include the areas of concern in the Waikato.

As has been pointed out by those closest to those communities, however, their advice has consistently not been heeded.

The resulting delays only risk increasing the need for the kinds of lockdowns and restrictions everyone must endure until vaccination rates are higher.

There is a reason we do not hear many voices in Maori and Pasifika communities asking for an end to elimination.

Left unchecked, COVID-19 disproportionately affects minority communities and the most vulnerable.

"Living with the virus" effectively means some people dying with it.

We know who many of them would be.

• Collin Tukuitonga Associate Dean Pacific and Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Auckland.
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission.