TE AWAMUTU NEWS | 1
THURSDAY OCTOBER 28, 2021
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OCTOBER 28, 2021
Covid news held back Mayors rebel against orchestrated releases
By Mary Anne Gill
A Waipā district councillor says she and other councillors were told to keep quiet for more than a day when Covid was detected in Te Awamutu’s wastewater so health authorities could put a communications package together. Hazel Barnes of Kihikihi said she was so scared she did not step outside her gate for fear she might come across the “poor people” who were carrying Covid. Her admission comes after Ōtorohanga mayor Max Baxter said he broke ranks over the weekend and released details of two cases in the district because his community needed to know. Barnes says she wishes now she had done the same thing. “We were asked not to speak about it, so I didn’t for nearly 48 hours.” She criticised the poor relationship between the council and Waikato District Health Board (DHB) which should have reached out to district councils a lot earlier in the pandemic. “We know our communities. People have a right to know. You’ve got to be honest and open about it.” The DHB reported yesterday there were 35
Max Baxter
cases in Te Awamutu/ Kihikihi, two in Ōtorohanga and three in Cambridge/ Karāpiro. Waipā continued to lead the way in the Waikato with first vaccination rates of 89.3 per cent and 71.8 per cent fully vaccinated. But for Waipā to get out of lockdown, and into orange, the whole Waikato DHB region of 435,690 people over 21,000 square kilometres, and every one of the other 19 DHBS, have to be 90 per cent vaccinated by the end of November. Baxter also highlighted issues with the dissemination of information about the pandemic. Without his intervention on Sunday, the community would have waited until the Ministry of Health’s 1pm stand up on Monday, he said.
Hazel Barnes
Baxter said he was being told there were cases linked to the Te Awamutu cluster an hour after the ministry’s stand up. “I had to do a lot more digging myself. They were talking about opening a testing centre in town.” So, he rang Waikato District Health Board chief executive Kevin Snee to ask whether it was true. He said Snee did not know but he got one of his colleagues to confirm the cases. It was Baxter and not the DHB which first reported there were two positive results in Ōtorohanga. Waipā mayor Jim Mylchreest said he felt Waikato DHB was keeping his community in the dark. “We weren’t getting any updates other than the daily ones the media were getting.”
The tip off about a Covid case in Cambridge earlier this month came via Civil Defence and not the DHB, he said. It was a similar case with reports of Covid in Te Awamutu’s wastewater. The government’s decision not to make the latest Covid outbreaks a national emergency meant it was being run by the Ministry of Health and district health boards without community involvement. “Local government knows their communities,” he said. The timing of releases about Covid have not been entirely user-friendly.” This week three mayors – Mylchreest, Paula Southgate (Hamilton) and Allan Sanson (Waikato) combined to express their concern at how information about the vaccination programme in the region was being rolled out. Allan Sansonsaid councils were ready to support any community vaccination initiatives but felt stymied by a lack of information coming from the Waikato DHB. The Waikato DHB acknowledged a series of questions from the News over communications issues but had not provided answers at press time.
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Why the Max factor was necessary By Roy Pilott, News director
Ōtorohanga Mayor Max Bradford deserves high praise for breaking a Covid mould. Since the arrival of Covid, the government, health boards and local bodies have staged managed information releases where and when they want. Mayor Bradford exposed that nonsense on Sunday when he released news about two cases in Ōtorohanga rather than wait 23 hours for the government to do so at its 1pm media stand up. Now Waipā councillor Hazel Barnes says she was told to keep quiet about Covid information. Health boards are struggling to reach their vaccinations targets. We wonder if they have asked themselves how many of those unvaccinated people are not living in the digital world – and rely on genuine community newspapers. It is a point not lost on Cr Barnes, who said many people she knew relied on their community newspaper for news. Take Super Saturday publicity. It was so staged for digital and television that community newspapers like your News – one of more than 80 in the country - could not provide readers with something as basic as a list of vaccination points. The information was rolled out on the eve of the big day. When a case was discovered in Karāpiro earlier this month and news spread through the Waipā community, it was the News which broke the story. The official announcement was being held back for TV audiences at 1pm. For health boards to hit targets, they must change their media approach and acknowledge the importance of, rather than shun, community newspapers. Our message to health boards, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Covid Minister Chris Hipkins is simple – tell your communications people to communicate, not orchestrate. This is a pandemic, it’s not time for publicity stunts.
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