VACCINATION GOALS LACK AMBITION

The Taranaki District Health Board has hit and exceeded its Covid-19 vaccination targets, but its relatively unambitious approach thus far still appears complacent.

As of June 15, Taranaki’s vaccination rate was 8.26 per cent of the population – the lowest in the country.

The national average for the same date was 17.8 per cent. Nelson/Marlborough has the highest vaccination level at 28 per cent of its population vaccinated, while after Taranaki, the next least vaccinated health district is Waikato at 13.95 per cent.

Admittedly, comparisons are not always helpful, but there’s a worryingly significant gap between first and last, even between last and second to last.

It really doesn’t matter that the Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB) has met and exceeded its 7 per cent vaccination target, as they regularly point out.

That target was the lowest in the country.

Even if they genuinely believed that was as much as they could do, as they have said, and didn’t want to promise something they couldn’t deliver, why are their capabilities so much less than other district health boards?

Sure, they have kept their promises, but it’s questionable whether this has built or eroded confidence in an organisation we look towards to shepherd us through this pandemic.

Taranaki people are proud of their hospitals and the people who work there, so let’s hope the problem is not that the board is under-resourced in equipment and/or expertise.

Let’s hope its timid vaccine performance is because the TDHB has done everything by the rule book at a time when other boards have recognised it’s time to throw that rule book out.

If that is the case, the worst they could be accused of is being sticklers to regulations.

Except this is not a time when regulations are necessarily the answer. This is our first pandemic in a century.

Everything is different.

Rather than congratulate themselves for reaching targets they knew they could achieve, the TDHB may better serve its people in the future by challenging itself to do more than it thought it could.

Or as we tell our kids – aim high.