Covid-19: Checkpoints, please – Gisborne leaders want vaccine, test stops at Tairāwhiti borders
Tuesday, 14 December 2021
Regional leaders in Gisborne have written to Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield requesting a public health order enabling checkpoints at the Tairāwhiti borders.
The letter from Rau Tipu Rau Ora, Tairāwhiti’s regional leaders, asks for police-led checkpoints to be set up at strategic locations on state highways 2 and 35, assisted by local iwi and hapū, to check travellers’ proof of vaccination status or that they have had a negative Covid-19 test within the 72-hour time frame.
Rehette Stoltz, Gisborne’s mayor and a co-chairperson of Rau Tipu Rau Ora, said the request was based not only on the risk to individuals and communities, but also on the fragility of the region’s health system.
“The Tairāwhiti health system will struggle to deal with a Covid outbreak among our current resident population. The addition of an estimated 10,000 returning whānau members and tourists would place enormous pressure on an already exhausted health workforce,” Stoltz said.
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The Gisborne District Council said it is estimated the Tairāwhiti population grows by 25 per cent to 30 per cent during the Christmas and new near holiday period.
The council recently announced that all camping would be restricted to those with vaccination passes, saying the move was based on calls from the local community.
Te Rūnanganui o Ngāti Porou chairman Selwyn Parata, who is also a co-chairperson of Rau Tipu Rau Ora, said townships such as Ruatorea and Uawa, and suburbs in Gisborne, still have high unvaccinated populations along with high numbers of pakeke (elders), under-12s and whānau with respiratory conditions.
These conditions were underscored by “the tyranny of distance, and health services and systems that have been neglected and under-resourced for years”, he said.
“We’re aware that police checkpoints in partnership with local iwi and hapū will be established in Northland from December 15 when the borders around Tāmaki Makaurau [Auckland] are lifted,” Parata said.
“We’re asking the same consideration be given to Tairāwhiti. We do not see this as setting a precedent for other parts of the country, because our circumstances in Tairāwhiti are unique and like Northland they require a bespoke response.”
The request comes as local iwi have been asking people to reconsider travelling to towns and remote communities on the east coast of the North Island this summer – a position backed by the New Zealand Māori Council.
The Kawerau, Whakatāne, Ōpōtiki and Gisborne districts are currently sitting in red in the Government’s Covid-19 Protection Framework, also known as the traffic light system, but will all move to the orange setting at 11.59pm on December 30.
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui has asked people to stay away this summer to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading in the rohe. There have been similar calls from Whakatōhea and Ngaitai, and Ngāti Porou has urged all whānau who live away from home “to think carefully about your plans for the holiday period”.
The formal request for Tairāwhiti border checkpoints is the first on the east coast.
Louis Rapihana from Te Whānau-ā-Apanui said last week that “having checkpoints is just too much of a risk for our people and so we are relying on visitors and whānau to listen and to understand our request that people don’t come up the coast this summer”.
Peter Fraser, the national secretary of the New Zealand Māori Council, said the council “absolutely support” what iwi are doing in their local areas to keep their people safe, and that includes checkpoints or advisories asking people to stay away.
“We are respecting their tino rangatiratanga and their authority to make decisions within their regions.”
He said he had spoken with concerned whānau in Tairāwhiti who brought up the fact that there were only six intensive-care unit (ICU) beds available in the region, at Gisborne Hospital.
“When you get figures like that, you totally understand the concern that they’ve got and what they’re saying,” Fraser said.
“If one whānau came down with Covid, and it was bad and needed to get ICU, you could potentially have one whānau take out the entire regional ICU service.”
Hauora Tairāwhiti has said ICU capacity can increase from six to eight beds, if required, and that the DHB has seven ventilators in total, two of which are transport ventilators.
As for local businesses and the regional economy needing visitors this summer, Fraser said: “You can’t really balance it.
“There’s not a trade-off you can do between how many percentage points of regional GDP versus how many lives. I mean, it’s just not even a conversation, from a Māori perspective, you’d even really have,” he said.
“We know from our history, and we know from the Government’s decisions at the moment, which is exactly the same as our history, [that] whenever you do this balancing, it’s always a trade-off. And the trade-off is that Māori are collateral damage. So that’s why we don’t want to have that conversation, because we know we always lose in that conversation.”
Rapihana, an Ōpōtiki councillor and also a member of the iwi response unit for Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, said last week that with ongoing Covid-19 disruption and the emergence of a new variant, the simple message from his iwi was to stay away.
“We are remote – most people are more than three hours from the nearest hospital, and we have a lot of vulnerable and elderly in our communities.”
He said his iwi was no stranger to pandemics, “and we still commemorate those we lost with the 1918 flu epidemic that ravaged our iwi and saw a huge loss of life with the generation of the early 1900s”.
In late November, Selwyn Parata urged all Ngāti Porou whānau who live away from home “to think carefully about your plans for the holiday period”.
“If you want to come home to Ngāti Porou, please consider the health and wellbeing of your whānau back here. Please consider how you would feel if you brought Covid-19 on holiday with you. Please remember that our region’s services will struggle to look after you and your whānau if you become unwell.”
Parata said the region’s health services “struggle to service our people as it is now, without the very real threat of Covid-19”.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that health services will be overwhelmed when Covid-19 arrives in our region. Ngāti Porou people will be at the worst end of that struggle; some of us will become seriously ill and some of us may die.”
He asked for people to be double-vaccinated and to make sure they had copies of their vaccine passes, if they had to come home.
“Please consider having a Covid-19 test before you leave and think about limiting your movements for a short time when you arrive in Te Tairāwhiti. We will all be safer if you are able to do these things, and we would love to see you home, safely.
“If you are unable to do these things, for whatever reason, please be less adventurous and consider staying where you are for the time being. We will gladly welcome you home again when the time is safe for all of us.”