A 78-year-old who's part of the Assembly of God church cluster in Auckland says communication from health authorities has made an already anxious time even more difficult.
Aniva Epati on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19. In total, eight people in her wider family have the virus, with two being in hospital.
She's concerned about the way health authorities are managing cases in the Pacific community.
"The communication is not really good," she told Newshub.
Aniva previously returned a negative result and is upset there was a 10-hour delay in picking up another household member who tested positive.
She says the family was told that person would be collected immediately and taken to a quarantine hotel.
"And we waited and waited until I rang and said 'it's not fair'," Aniva says. "They too slow to pick up the people who already got the virus."
Her brother and sister in law are currently in hospital. But she says trying to get information about their condition and which hospital they were in was difficult.
"We rang the Auckland Hospital and they were not there. We rang the hotel and they were not there and we panic."
She found out late on Friday night they were at Middlemore Hospital.
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She's urging her community to remain calm, but also wants the Pacific community to help one another, especially as some don't speak English.
"I really want the Samoans to help each other. If some other Samoans don't understand what's going on, we have to help them."
Aniva is expecting to be collected and taken to the Jet Park quarantine facility shortly, but hopes in the future Pasifika health providers will liaise with others in the community to relieve the stress.
A Northern Region Health Coordination Centre spokesperson told Newshub they apologise for what happened.
"We are sorry this woman had a poor experience. We acknowledge there have been some delays in gettting people into quarantine facilities due to the high number of cases."
The spokesperson also said it can take time to arrange clinically safe transportation.
"We are working at pace to move people into both Jet Park and our new quarantine facility at Novotel Ellerslie."
The spokesperson said they had two Samoan speaking staff at these facilities and "several" at public health, who are "communicating regularly with the church community cases."
