Dr Talemaitoga who is part of the New Zealand government's Immunisation Implementation Advisory, has also cautioned against letting the measles vaccination programme falter again. He said although Covid-19 vaccinations were taking centre stage, it's important to also stay on top of immunisation for measles, an outbreak of which killed over 80 people in Samoa in in 2019. "We still had a huge gap in our measles, mumps rubella catch-up which should have been happening now, but which hasn't had the currency with our Pacific communities. So that's number one and we're really wanting to ramp that up." The Ministry of Health launched its measles immunisation programme last year shortly before Auckland entered its second covid-19 lockdown, which overshadowed it.