At the start of Auckland’s Delta outbreak, 18-year-old Tali Meavale tested positive for Covid-19. The Mt Albert Grammar deputy head boy shares his story. Video / RNZ
An Auckland high school student who tested positive for Covid believes delays moving him into quarantine likely caused his 74-year-old mum to also contract the deadly virus.
Mt Albert Grammar School 18-year-old Tali Meavale caught Covid at the start of the current Delta outbreak as part of a cluster of cases at Mangere’s Assembly of God church.
The cluster is the biggest in New Zealand so far with 386 people catching Covid – albeit all having now thankfully recovered from the virus.
Now he is sharing his story and creating videos about his experience to help educate elderly Samoans better understand social distancing and what happens when you test positive.
He is also speaking out to address what he feels are shortcomings in the way health teams handled the cases among Samoan people.
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In a video interview with RNZ he says the shortcomings included poor communication as officials failed to properly explain bubbles and close contacts in ways the church’s Samoan community – especially the elderly with limited English – could connect with.
He said it also included muddled test results and slow quarantining.
Meavale said it took four days after he tested positive for Covid for health teams to move him out of his family home and into a quarantine facility.
That left his 74-year-old mother exposed, he said.
“For a positive case in a household with a 74 year-old mum sharing a bathroom, kitchen … sharing everything,” he told RNZ.
“I think she would have been negative to this day if I hadn’t stayed at home for those four days.”
Meavale’s mum would later test positive to Covid three days after he left to go to a quarantine facility.
He said he sympathised with health teams given he tested positive at a time when there were 80 cases a day and contact tracers were under the pump.
Yet the slow quarantine transfer also came after officials earlier muddled Meavale’s positive Covid test result, he said.
He said after testing negative to Covid two times, health teams originally called him up to say his third test had also been negative and he could leave the house.
Meavale and his mum subsequently headed to the shops, only to find out when he returned home that his result had actually been positive.
“Having put my 74-year-old mum at risk, having put a lot of customers and workers at risk was really frightening,” he said.
“It was all because of a simple muddle-up on their system, I thought that wasn’t good enough.”
Meavale encouraged health officials to get more creative in finding ways to communicate with New Zealand’s many diverse ethnic communities.
For instance, he said members of his church spent long hours in the three days after the first positive case in their congregation drawing diagrams and explainers to help everyone understand who needed to get tested, who should isolate and who was a close contact.
Then in quarantine, he said cultural things like more suitable food could have helped out.
While younger Samoans were happy to eat nachos, butter chicken and salmon pasta, it wasn’t always a hit with elderly Samoans, such as his mum and older aunt, who barely ate during their quarantine stay.
Given most of those testing positive were Pasifika, more effort could have been made.
Meavale said he has now teamed up with partners to create short two-minute videos aimed at elderly Samoan community members.
The videos involve an elderly man asking questions from a doctor and – rather than typical health videos that have a single person reading off a script – Meavale said his videos try to answer questions he has heard from elderly people in a fun way.
“My advice to the system is to start getting creative,” he said.
“If the educational side is not working, start doing something else, get creative.”
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