A Māori Party co-leader says there is a sense authorities have been too slow to respond in Stratford after multiple positive wastewater tests in the region before six cases of Covid-19 were discovered.
The cases in Stratford were found after more than a week of repeated detections in the town's wastewater.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told Morning Report the she would have been more done after the first positive wastewater results.
She has been in the community and said there is some dissatisfaction.
"I'm attached with our iwi health provider, and have been using our influence really to be doing vaccinations and in testing, saliva testing, a couple of days ago, and there's just a general sense from the community that it was moving too slow."
Ngarewa-Packer said the community got a lot of visitors, putting it at risk of Covid-19.
"This is a town that has a heck of a lot of traffic that comes through it. It has two trunks into it through the Taumarunui back entrance, and then we've had the Mōkau border between Waikato and Taranaki stood down about three weeks ago by the police, and there was political pressure for that.
"It's really been a ticking time bomb."
She said she wants to see restrictions tightened, but it's hard to predict what will happen next.
"That's not really been the reaction around the country has it? It's really hard to gauge where they're going to go with this. We'd like to see a conservative approach so that we can go in and do some more testing."
