'I was told it was too casual' - Ardern jokes about Instagram post to outline challenges of Covid messaging

March 2, 2021

Official Covid-19 messaging has been in the spotlight after the new community cases in South Auckland.

Jacinda Ardern has outlined the difficulties of getting appropriate Covid-19 messaging to all communities in New Zealand as she joked about being told an Instagram post “was too casual”.

The Prime Minister was asked today about the effectiveness of Covid-19 messages for young people particularly, with some saying messages were too old and too stale.

“I popped up something on Instagram and I was told it was too casual, so,” a smiling Ardern said.

Taking a more serious tone, Ardern said the Government had an ongoing focus on messaging.

“What we try and do is make sure that we are putting out messages across multiple platforms and using multiple communicators as well.”

“I’m aware for instance that TPK are using creative natives, we’ve got the Ministry for Pacific Peoples who engage with The Cause Collective, that’s alongside the Covid-19 all of Government group, the usual health agencies and Government departments.”

“We certainly try and we certainly reach out to others who have wide reach in their communities and community leaders to support that too, that’s something that they will keep working on, translation is also an issue that we know we need to make sure that we’ve got all our key messages reaching into multiple communities.”

The messaging questions come after the KFC worker who went to work shortly before testing positive for Covid-19 said yesterday that she was never told to isolate at home.

Today, Ardern said she had looked back at the communication with the woman, known as case L, who is a member of a household which included a Papatoetoe High School student who tested positive on February 23.

“There were emails sent from the school, in the order of 15 text messages and phone calls, I cannot answer whether those were received, certainly you can see attempts were made.”

“I think rather than getting into a back and forth on that, we’ll do our bit and see what can be done to improve on our side.”

“The message is the same for everyone, if you’re sick please get a test.”

“The simple message remains the same, if we reach out and ask family members to get tested, please do that as soon as possible because it does save everyone a world of pain.”

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