5. Question No. 5—COVID-19 ResponseTEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister for COVID-19 ResponseQuestion No. 5—COVID-19 Response5. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Is she satisfied that the Government's response to COVID-19 is delivering equitable outcomes including by implementing the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal in Haumaru: The COVID-19 Priority Report?SPEAKER: I'll just let the House know that the Minister has advised me that this answer will take a little longer than usual. Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you Mr Speaker. We recognise the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on Māori which were highlighted by the tribunal's Haumaru report. We have made significant steps forward in addressing the disparities highlighted by the report and actions are in place to address each of the five recommendations the report has made. With respect to the first recommendation specific funding has been given directly to Māori health providers to support the COVID-19 response including $29.6 million for the response into Omicron. With respect to the second recommendation the Ministry of Health is working with Statistics New Zealand to bring together ethnicity and disability data and analysis of that data is under way. With respect to the third recommendation the Māori Monitoring Group has been set up and that enables leadership from across different sectors and communities to provide independent accountability and monitoring of the Ministry of Health with respect to its COVID-19 activities. With respect to the fourth recommendation there is significant work under way to maximise the paediatric and booster roll-out for Māori including sprint events conducted at the local level in collaboration with Māori health providers. And finally to the fifth recommendation Te Arawhiti implemented a revised Crown approach to engaging with iwi Māori on the COVID-19 response to enable Māori views to have a stronger and earlier input into the response.Teanau Tuiono: Why did the Government remove mask mandates on public transport despite advice from the Director-General of Health that Māori Pasifika people with disabilities and people living in areas of high deprivation are likely to be disproportionately affected if mask mandates were removed and replaced with strong recommendations."Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: We continue to recommend the use of masks on public transport and in other crowded places. The mandate is not in place because of the feasibility and practicalities of enforcing a mandate in that setting. It is worth remembering that in public transport we're often asking the drivers or stewards to enforce compliance with the mandate.Teanau Tuiono: How is the Government supporting Māori and Pasifika peoples experiencing long COVID?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Long COVID is an incredibly challenging condition. I know many people with long COVID and other post-viral syndromes suffer from lack of recognition of that condition. From very early on since there has been awareness of long COVID we have been very clear that it is real and reflected it in our guidelines. It is really important that people are aware of where to go in the health system to have a diagnosis and explanation and advice about their recovery. In addition we do keep searching for new ways that we might be able to do more. In our third tranche of investment in specific COVID-19 research we included multiple projects addressed at new science of COVID-19 including one project that would develop a patient register and another that would monitor some of the immunological characteristics of the condition.Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Will the Ministry of Health commit to conducting COVID-19 prevalence surveys to provide more reliable information on the level of risk especially within Māori and Pasifika communities and for immunocompromised and disabled people?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Thank you. As we canvassed at select committee today we are committed to conducting a prevalence survey. I think one of the complexities that the team is working through with that study is how to get a representative sample of Māori and Pasifika as well as the whole population. So it cannot just be a random sample; it has to have an over-representation of some of the populations that the member has mentioned. I would just like to return to the overall point here which is that we have a wealth of data for tracking our outbreak of the pandemic in New Zealand when you look across the case reporting numbers the use of whole genome sequencing and of wastewater sampling—all of which is broken down where possible by ethnicity and made publicly available very quickly.Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Which specific recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal report into COVID-19 has the Government implemented in full?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I refer the member to my primary answer.Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Will she commit to rolling out more effective bivalent boosters once this receives Medsafe approval and expressly prioritise Māori and Pasifika communities and those providers in that roll-out?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: The decision to roll-out a vaccine is based on both Medsafe approval and expert advice from the COVID-19 technical advisory group and others in the Ministry of Health and the arrangements for the procurement of those vaccines are under way. But I do want to challenge the premise of that member's question and just refer her to the Good practice statement on the use of variant-containing COVID-19 vaccines published by the World Health Organization on 17 October that are quite clear that at this stage there is no evidence of superiority of bivalent vaccines for preventing COVID-19. It is incredibly important we continue to encourage people to get boosted with the highly effective vaccine that is available."