Friday 5: 10 September 2021

Malo e lelei,

Join us in celebrating Tongan Language Week 2021! This year’s theme for Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e lea faka-Tonga - Tonga Language Week is Fakakoloa 'o Aotearoa 'aki 'a e Ako Lelei, which means enriching Aotearoa with holistic education. On that note welcome to this week’s Friday nima.

1. Shout out to Pacific Covid-19 Vaccination Centre Westgate for reaching their 50,000 vaccinations administered milestone in 114 days! Mālie team on all your hard work!

2. September 8th, we saw the launch of the Northshore Aerodome Drive Through Site. Saepe to the all the teams involved in setting up yet another drive through, the site has administered 500 doses to date!

3. The Pacific led initative for the LDS was live from the 1st – 4th September and managed to adminsterd an outsatding 2,224 doses across the 4 days and 1,717 of those were to Pacific Peoples. Malo 'Aupito to everyone involved for getting this site ready!

4. The MMT Tongan Covid-19 Vaccination Drive Through at the Kolo Tonga, Tuingpapai Church went live on the 9th September and to date has adminstered a faufaua 568 doses to date! Thank you everyone for all your hard work.

5. This week our CBD site packed up and moved to 35 Graham Street! Màlò to the team who worked very hard around the clock to make this move as seamless as possible! Wednesday morning the team were joined by Anthony Hawke from Ngati Whatua, our Mana Whenua Lead Tui Blair & Willis Maihi for a karakia over the new site followed by a waiata. A lovely way to start the teams new journey at Graham Street. It's a huge site so the team are looking forward to ramping up the bookings once everything is in place. Check out the new site below!

A huge shout out to our Pharmacy lead Daniel Tsai who will be leaving us today to begin his paternity leave, Daniel has supported the vaccination programme and, in his time, here has managed to implement 48 sites to date with another 84 in the process of onboarding. Thank you for all your work Daniel, wishing you all the best from everyone in the team!

If you didn’t catch the awesome story earlier this week, please see the link to the 7 Sharp piece featuring our airport drive-through: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/seven-sharp/clips/behind-the-scenes-of-nz-s-biggest-vaccination-drive-thru

And finally, some wonderful feedback from some clients who had been recently vaccinated at the Manurewa Marae Vaccination Centre:

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank the vaccination team for how well they took care of my mum and I when we were vaccinated yesterday. My mum and frightened and they reassured her and made her feel safe during the entire experience. Your team are amazing! Thank you for ensuring that our people are treated with kindness and their dignity is maintained.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Faka'au a,

The Vaxx Programme