Local Focus: Drive-through vax proving popular

Living Waters is a general practice serving the beach community of Castlecliff in Whanganui from the Mill Rd industrial area.

Since level 4 the clinic has vaccinated around 1000 people per week, with the drive-through convenience proving particularly popular.

One of the nurses, Jenny Rangiwananga, says she has noticed the number of people coming to Living Waters.

"Because we're doing drive-through's as well as booked appointments, the whole whānau are coming, they're bringing their children and their over 12-year-olds, so that's been really great," she said.

Living Waters was able to mobilise its drive-through vaccine rollout almost immediately the country was plunged into level 4 thanks to having plenty of experience in infectious diseases.

"I've got a Masters in International Health," said one of the doctors, Dr Praveen Thadgiri. "My specialty is disease control. I've been involved with a lot of disease outbreaks back in India so that experience kind of helps you in the way you think, in the way you plan."

The award-winning clinic is part of the Māori-led primary health organisation, the National Hauora Coalition and offers very low-cost access to health care.

"We've got certain areas of the building which we are going to be using in the weeks," Thadigiri said. "We expect to create red and green streams where we are quite easily separate patients coming in with no risk of exposure."

While vaccination rates at the clinic have slowed a little from last week's 200 a day, there's hope they'll remain high. Only half of Whanganui's population are fully or partially vaccinated.

"We only need to look back in history and look at all of the diseases that we have managed to eliminate because of vaccines," Thadgiri said. "If there's any advice that we are able to give, and most health officials have been trying to share, is the fact the vaccine does protect and historically we have been able to win over infectious diseases, especially in developed countries, mainly because of vaccines."

The vaccines are carefully monitored but can't be kept overnight so Living Waters is encouraging locals without an appointment to give them a call after 3pm to save any going to waste.

Made with funding from