Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson says it is "extremely distressing" to hear some Pasifika are struggling to be admitted to hospital from MIQ.
His comments came after he was played an excerpt from a 1News interview with Tuala Tagaloa Tusani , who is in hospital with Covid-19.
Both Tusani and his partner struggled to be re-admitted to hospital after being discharged back to the Novotel & Ibis Ellerslie quarantine facility.
Tusani, chairman of the ASA Foundation, a charity that helps vulnerable families, was struggling to breathe and claims when he asked for help he was told to take Panadol.
He told Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver he called for an ambulance himself, but waited hours for it to arrive as it had to be approved to come.
Tusani's partner allegedly waited even longer for one, collapsing when she eventually arrived at hospital.
Robertson told Breakfast the excerpt — in which Tusani struggles to talk as he is so out of breath — was "awful to listen" to.
He said he had not seen the full interview on Wednesday's 6pm news, but what he did just hear was "extremely distressing".
Although he could not speak to individual situations, Robertson said MIQ facilities had trained healthcare staff on site and people "from time to time" are transferred to hospital.
With Pasifika making up around 74 per cent of the Delta outbreak, community leaders say language barriers and cultural misunderstanding are contributing to the problem.
With 170,000 people going through MIQ in the last year-and-a-half, feedback was their overall experiences had been good, he said.
However, this did not excuse situations which don't go right and are distressing and disturbing for some people, Robertson said.
The Government had recognised it needed to support Pasifika families who had come into MIQ when they were not expecting to, which was "definitely challenging" for them.
Robertson said the Government was continually improving its MIQ system.
About 74 per cent of cases in the latest Delta outbreak are Pasifika.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has said the threshold someone would have to reach to be hospitalised with the virus "is reasonably high".
"So, the fact that someone is unwell with Covid-19 doesn’t necessarily mean that they would justify being sent to a hospital," he said.
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