The Front Page: ‘Telegraphed punch’ in the Ministry of Health’s inflated vaccine numbers

The numbers we were served weren’t as accurate as they could have been. Photo / Getty Images

Revelations this week that New Zealand’s vaccination rate is lower than previously trumpeted will not hit all New Zealanders equally.

The Ministry of Health’s maths is under review by Stats NZ and there are now strong suggestions that the percentage of vaccinated will not stay at its current 96 per cent.

Speaking to the Front Page podcast, senior Herald writer David Fisher says that the overall figure is likely to drop several percentage points as more accurate data is taken into consideration.

Fisher explains that this issue arises from the data the Ministry of Health used in its communications with the public.

“It’s called the Health Service Utilisation 2020 (HSU 2020), which refers to people who used health services in 2020,” says Fisher.

“That’s the database, they’ve used for our vaccination strategy.”

The problem with this is that not all members of society use healthcare services at the same rate, meaning that the accuracy of the information differed across populations – and specifically undercounted the Māori and Pasifika ethnic groups.

“Māori and Pasifika ethnicities don’t have a great tendency to access medical services … It’s a part of the population that doesn’t tend to have a great deal of cash available. If they get sick, they go to bed. They don’t do what Waipareira Trust’s John Tamihere described to me as Pakeha warrant of fitness tests, where you go along to the doctor, check how you’re doing and pay your 30 bucks.”

Fisher says the weakness in this data wasn’t a secret and that health officials had been alerted to it before.

“Everything unfolded with that weakness acknowledged but nothing was done about it,” says Fisher.

“It just seems so wrong that we were able to stand there and take a punch that was so well telegraphed.

“New Zealand took the punch, but it wasn’t all of the country that took the punch. It was 16 per cent of the population … How could we allow such inequitable statistics to be produced?”

Fisher says that this use of data is reflective of the inequities that exist throughout the health system and also in other sectors.

“It’s happening across education, corrections and every other poor indicator in the country. It’s even more sickening because here we are again doing the same thing we’ve always done as a nation. And look who gets to come last.”

The issue of the use of the data also made its way into the court system.

“Waitangi Tribunal put out a review on how the Government’s response to Covid matched up with its responsibilities as a Treaty party. And they put out this excoriating finding in December that was damning about the HSU 2020 figures. It said that failure to have good data led to a failure in treaty partnership and responsibilities.”

There were also two High Court judgments that came before that.

“These judgments were based on Māori health providers going to the court to force the Government to give it data and information about Māori vaccination rates.”

And yet, the data was still used in communications to the public to illustrate how New Zealand was progressing in its fight against Covid.

Fisher says there is an argument to be made for keeping the data consistent throughout the pandemic to avoid confusion and to show clear progress, but this doesn’t negate the impact this decision has had.

Fisher believes the data discussion needs to be picked up by a Royal Commission into New Zealand’s Covid-19 response.

“It’s one of a bunch of questions that hand around our Covid response, which have never been properly answered,” says Fisher.

Other issues that need to be addressed include the general vulnerability of the health system, the apparent lack of preparation by the time Omicron arrived and the general treatment of Māori amid the challenges of the pandemic.

“Those are all questions for a Royal Commission, which in my view, should have been going 18 months ago. It should have been there sort of as an upper house or a societal sounding board.”

The numbers we were served weren’t as accurate as they could have been. Photo / Getty Images

• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.

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