When can Auckland schools finally reopen?
Along with a new vaccination mandate for teachers, public health experts say a work programme will be needed to make schools safer during the delta outbreak
Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Tuesday, October 12, by Justin Giovannetti. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.
In today’s edition: The government grapples with the end of elimination; Tiwai Point could remain open; private MIQ is approved for a business leader; but first, the future of Auckland’s schools.
It isn’t clear when the city’s schools will fill with students again. (Halbergman/Getty Images)
A change of plans for schools. All teachers will be required to receive their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccination by next month after the government confirmed yesterday that it will be creating a new mandate to cover the education sector. It’s an unprecedented expansion of vaccination requirements beyond border and medical staff, but Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said it was necessary to protect children under the age of 12 who currently can’t be vaccinated. “It’s not an easy decision, but we need the people who work with vulnerable communities who haven’t yet been vaccinated to take this extra step,” he said.
While the decision might soothe anxious parents, the government’s plan to resume schooling in Auckland next Monday has been paused after the prime minister said the risk posed by the current delta outbreak is too high.
Some teachers are bound to lose their jobs as a result. As Stuff reports, the new vaccination mandate will require all staff who have contact with children and students to be fully vaccinated by New Year’s Day. Educators not fully vaccinated before January 1 will be required to show weekly negative tests. A similar mandate has been extended to cover all healthcare workers in high-risk jobs, including GPs, pharmacists, community healthcare nurses, midwives and paramedics. They must be fully vaccinated by December 1. Both mandates will cover hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are already vaccinated. Main education union NZEI says it supports the move.
The current state of the pandemic. Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that the country is now in one of the “most challenging moments” of the pandemic, with Auckland, Northland and parts of Waikato all remaining under some form of lockdown. The R number, representing the number of people an infected person passes the virus to, is now above one and climbing. Over 17% of cases in the current outbreak were in children under the age of nine and as immunologist Dianne Sika-Paotonu told the Science Media Centre, delta poses a more significant risk for children:
“Infection patterns indicate that children and young people are more susceptible to the delta variant of the Covid virus when compared with the original strain. Although more likely to have mild or asymptomatic disease, children can still catch the virus and become sick, they can still end up with long Covid-19, and for children and youth with underlying medical conditions, they are at higher risk of serious illness and hospitalisation.”
What will it require to reopen schools in Auckland? With the outbreak growing, schools in the country’s largest city won’t be able to reopen until “robust safety measures” are in place, the prime minister said, according to RNZ. What those measures might be is under review. However a number of epidemiologists from the University of Otago have set out what they expect will be required along with the new vaccination mandate: An intensive programme to increase vaccinations among student families; an emphasis on ventilation, including outdoor classrooms; staggered break times to increase social distancing; more mask wearing; and a clearer plan to deal with an outbreak at school. Funding might also be required from the government to install indoor air monitoring in classrooms. All together, it’s a significant programme of work that mirrors some of the wider efforts to get Auckland out of level three.
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Te Pāti Māori wants a stricter lockdown as it warns the Covid outbreak could be a “modern genocide.” The Guardian reports that the opposition party has called for Auckland to be placed in level four lockdown and the rest of the North Island brought up to level three until 95% of Māori are vaccinated. Māori are far more likely to be hospitalised if infected with Covid-19 and have a lower vaccination rate. The prime minister has disagreed with the opposition party. In The Conversation, public health experts argue that even as the country switches to suppression instead of elimination, we still can’t live with the pandemic. It’s about much more than semantics.
The Covid numbers: 35 new community cases were reported yesterday, all in Auckland. 51% (29) of the previous day’s total were in the community while infectious. There are now 452 active cases. 42,226 people were vaccinated on Sunday.
The Spinoff’s Covid data tracker has the latest figures.
One big region of New Zealand didn’t get a mention yesterday and the South Island noticed. Business leaders told the Timaru Herald that they were “gobsmacked” the prime minister didn't mention the South Island at the Covid-19 press conference. Some were expecting a move to level one for the island, which hasn’t had a case of community transmission in nearly a year. Others wanted a mention, a plan, a possible border, something. While it can be easy to shrug off southern frustration from Wellington or Auckland, the government should be direct and clear if the plan is to not return any part of the country back to level one.
The Tiwai Point aluminium smelter might remain open after 2024. Stuff reports from documents released under the Official Information Act that the government and smelter owner Rio Tinto are in talks to keep the plant operating longer. Aluminium prices are at near-record highs and the company struck a deal to keep buying cheap power for years, so an extension makes economic sense. It could however be a disaster for the country’s climate efforts. Plans to electrify the economy, including new electric vehicles, depend on using the electricity that currently flows to Tiwai Point.
The Spinoff is hiring. Two positions are being created, a Māori politics reporter and a Pacific communities editor, thanks to NZ On Air’s Public Interest Journalism Fund. They are both important additions to our editorial team and the details can be found here. If you’re the right person, give it a go and apply.
Two big deals for corporate new Zealand. Z Energy’s board wants shareholders to accept a takeover offer from an Australian fuel retailer. Stuff reports that the $2 billion deal could see Ampol sell its Gull stations in exchange for Commerce Commission approval for buying Z (which is a sponsor of this newsletter). It’s a substantial shakeup of the fuel sector and would be the largest takeover to fall under a new test created to ensure deals are in the national interest.
RNZ also reports that 2degrees is in talks to merge with local broadband operator Orcon, which owns Slingshot and Stuff Fibre. The American-based, Canadian-listed owner of 2degrees wants to combine the two companies into a much larger corporate entity that would control 20% of the local market.
The government has approved a private MIQ scheme for Sir Ian Taylor. Later this week the government is going to unveil the names of 150 business people who can isolate at home after an international trip. But first, the founder of Animation Research has been given the approval to run his own private border facility for himself. Taylor is going to fly from his home base in Dunedin, across the boundary into Auckland, on to LA and San Francisco, and back, without using MIQ, the NZ Herald reports. He got two ministers and one of the government’s most powerful bureaucrats interested in his ideas. He said it could be a roadmap for other business leaders and sports teams in the future.
Meanwhile, over the weekend an MIQ facility in Hamilton with over 110 rooms was removed from the system and made available only for community cases. It makes the return home for people outside the country a little harder. With the Taylor decision, the government has indicated some New Zealanders will be able to travel more freely while others face the possibility of being stuck overseas indefinitely if they leave.
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Right now on The Spinoff: Leonie Hayden has written about masks again, but this time she’s found that anti-maskers have ruined exemptions for those who really need them. Harkanwal Singh has produced a map showing travel times from every suburb to the closest vaccination centre which highlights some unhelpful trends. Reweti Kohere reports that working from home is here to stay even after lockdown (eventually) ends. Jamie Wall speaks with Sonny Bill Williams about his memoir and the whiteness of the NZ rugby establishment. Mirjam Guesgen dives into the unsteady, underpaid reality of life as a scientist in NZ today. Nadine Anne Hura writes a powerful letter to her father, who is alone in Middlemore.
The Commonwealth Games are getting a radical new look. The number of compulsory sports that must be staged at the games is being cut from 16 to two, with only swimming and athletics remaining on the programme, RNZ reports. The requirement for an athletes’ village is also being dropped (hello Airbnb). As a result, future games will be expected to showcase local tastes and emerging sports, which could be great for lacrosse and kabaddi, but a real worry for events like squash and netball that have historically seen the Commonwealth Games as the place to win.
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