By Pacific for Pacific response considered 'one of the success stories' in Covid-19 inquiry

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 Lessons Learned counted the “by Pacific for Pacific” approach among their "success stories".

The commission's Covid-19 inquiry was initiated by the government to review the country's official response to the pandemic, to help NZ to be better prepared for the future.

A key lesson learned during the pandemic was when Māori and Pacific vaccine hesitancy was high, also fueled by misinformation. This prompted a "Pacific for Pacific approach", from engaging in fono (meetings) with Pacific leaders to Pacific vaccination centres.

Chair of the Commission Professor Tony Blakely says the "Pacific by Pacific, Māori by Māori vaccine outreach worked quite well".

"It's one of the success stories of the pandemic," Blakely says.

"It took us a while to get that moving so there's one lesson in there already."

The commission has spoken to over a thousand people involved in the Covid response, from Pacific supermarket workers to church leaders and medical experts. They have so far garnered over 95,000 pages of evidence.

Blakely says despite their research's topics being broad, there are things they do not cover such as health system changes during the pandemic, parliament closing and private decisions between patients and GPs on drug use for covid.

"With the change of government, they've agreed to undertake a process to ask Aotearoa-New Zealand whether they want to tweak, refine or extend our terms of reference," he says.

Blakely says this is an opportunity to redirect the focus of the commission's inquiry into other matters such as lockdowns or vaccine mandates.

The inquiry also wanted to expand this to the public last November but decided to wait until after the elections. Now that the coalition government have settled in their seats, the inquiry are asking the public for their thoughts.

"We're asking people two questions," Blakely says.

"One, looking back what were the things that were the most important to you? Two, looking forward what are the lessons?

"There's going to be another pandemic sometime soon. What are the things you want us to learn from this last wretched pandemic to make it better for our kids and grandkids in the future."

Watch the full interview from 531pi's Facebook page below: