A Māori health researcher and adviser says the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Waikato is "not wise".
At 11.59pm on Tuesday, Waikato will move back to Alert Level 2 - despite there being 113 active Covid-19 cases still in the region, including seven announced on Monday.
But Dr Rawiri Taonui on Tuesday morning told Breakfast the Government needs to wait for vaccinations to ramp up before moving down levels.
"The moves the Government has made have all pre-empted surges in Māori cases, so when Auckland went to Level 3 there was a surge in Māori cases - 42 days in a row now highest cases every day. Last week Auckland went to 3.2 (Level 3, Step 2) and Northland to 2, in the four days since there's been more than 100 Māori cases a day, more than 50 per cent of all new cases announced for the first time.
"Moving Waikato to Level 2 when you've got cases in MidCentral, Lakes, Taranaki, all of which are DHBs with very low Māori vaccination rates is not wise," he said.
The Government has also made clear that it intends to open the Auckland border to allow the fully vaccinated to go on their summer holidays, even while the Delta strain of Covid-19 continues to steadily creep down the North Island - having already reach as far south as Masterton.
But Taonui said modelling suggests there will be another 6000 Māori Covid-19 cases by Christmas.
"The Government is saying the traffic light system is about safety with the vaccine, but Māori full vaccination is still about 20 to 22 per cent behind the national average and there's nothing safe about these decisions," he said.
"In the race between increasing Māori cases and vaccination, Delta is winning hands down."
Taonui said the Government needed to give more time for both Māori and Pacific vaccination numbers to catch up, which he said had increased by 57 per cent in the past two months - 2.5 times the rate of the Pākehā community.
"A lot of work's going in from the Māori community to catch up, but we need to be given the room to catch up on what was a very poor vaccination roll out," he said.
"What's happening at the moment is the Government's using the mainstream average of vaccinations to introduce the traffic light system by stealth while Māori people, Pacific peoples and poor people, because vaccination is low in high deprivation areas, leaving us behind and we've been caught out by Covid Delta."
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