Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare says the Government's focus for raising Māori Covid-19 vaccination rates is shifting to helping health providers give one-on-one consultations for those still hesitant about the jab.
Henare spoke to Breakfast on Thursday morning as he continues a road trip around the country speaking to Māori health providers and DHBs about the Māori vaccination programme.
The Tāmaki Makaurau MP said the road trip was an "exciting opportunity" to help increase vaccination numbers in a critical area.
"We'll visit a number of sites [each day] to see how we can do that," Henare said on increasing Māori vaccine rates.
"More importantly though, we talk to DHBs about what are the barriers and how can we break them down."
One of the Government's latest schemes to increase vaccination rates is a 'Super Saturday' which Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced at Wednesday's 1pm briefing.
While the National Day of Action is set for Saturday October 16, Henare said there's plenty that can be done before then for Māori vaccination figures.
"Over the past week in Northland, Taranaki and today in Rotorua, the vaccine has been available on marae, sports clubs, pop-up clinics and door-to-door opportunities," he said.
"I've seen some fantastic innovation and results in communities, but we just need more of it and now we're working with a part of the community that are really hard to engage with.
"We're finding that health providers are doing their best and our job is to continue to support them to do that."
Latest models suggest when the general population hits a 90 per cent vaccinated threshold, only 62 per cent of Māori will be vaccinated.
Despite that, Henare remains "optimistic" the efforts he's seen will prove that projection wrong.
"There are lots of really good opportunities out there in the communities," he said.
"We've got so much going on but one of the key things we're hearing as we visit DHBs is what needs to happen regionally is far better co-ordination.
"We've got GP clinics, pharmacies, Māori health providers and DHBs and it's our chance now to be far more co-ordinated than we've ever been and that hasn't always happened on the ground."
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