A pint, a meal and an after-work yarn has come with a shot in the arm for people in Pongaroa.
Registered nurse Melissa Nikora gets ready for the Covid-19 vaccination clinic at the Pongaroa Hotel. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham
The northern Wairarapa town, 90km southeast of Palmerston North and home to a few hundred people, has a main street featuring a general store and a pub.
On Friday evening, among the utes and other vehicles parked outside the Pongaroa Hotel, was a mobile vaccination van, part of a push to increase rural vaccination rates.
Pongaroa is part of the Tararua District, where two community cases of Covid-19 were recorded last week.
The latest figures show the district's first-dose vaccination rate, at 86 percent, is behind that of the whole MidCentral District Health Board region, which has hit 90 percent.
The health board and local iwi, Ngāti Kahungunu and Rangitāne, are running mobile vaccination clinics away from main centres to ensure people who can't get to town easily can still be vaccinated.
As well as the pub, on Friday they visited a forestry site and made two call-ins to people's homes.
Pongaroa Hotel manager Melissa Carrington-Morse was happy to host the clinic, which set up in a back room behind the bustling bar.
"[It's] for anyone that can't get to town and it's just easier for people to come out and get their jabs [with their] mates at the pub, and why wouldn't you want to?" she told RNZ while pulling pints and taking dinner orders.
"With this being out here, and town's not that far away - there's no excuse really."
Fifty-one people received vaccinations at the pub on Friday.
Those spoken to by RNZ appreciated the clinic coming to them and said they were getting the shots to keep their families safe.
Doris Peeti and her colleagues at Rangitāne health organisation Te Kete Hauora in Dannevirke came up with the idea of holding a clinic at the pub.
Peeti has lived at the Owahanga Station, 25 minutes' drive from Pongaroa, for more than 45 years.
"Our Pongaroa people find it hard to get to town. They're all farmers. It's just really hard for them to get in.
"We knew that there was quite a few out here that didn't get vaccinated.
"There's been a few that are still anti on doing it, but the positive is we've had a lot who have decided, 'It's here so I can come here. I don't have to go into town'."
Pongaroa was a tight-knit community and Peeti wanted to see everyone kept safe.
Covid-19 vaccination rates in the Tararua District are lagging behind those of the MidCentral DHB region as a whole. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham
Those at the Pongaroa Hotel agreed they didn't want a Covid-19 outbreak there.
Local man Brian McCathie said vaccinations would help with that.
"We're a little community. We don't need other people here if they're going to bring it to us. We can get vaccinated and live out our lives out here."
McCathie has an upcoming hip operation, which he worries will be cancelled if there's a community Covid-19 outbreak.
"I feel it's unfair that people who need operations are going to be held out by people who had the opportunity to be vaccinated."
MidCentral Covid-19 response team leader, registered nurse Melissa Nikora, said she was pleased with the turnout at the pub.
People were saying the relaxed environment made it more enticing, and many were keen to get their shot and return to their Friday-night routine.
"We are here at Pongaroa pub so they do say, 'Can we drink?' We always encourage them to wait for after their 15 minutes [post vaccination observation period] first.
"We encourage them to drink water, which we are supplying, then after that are free to do what they like."
