Rangiuru School principal Mike Gullick and other four staff members have chosen not to get vaccinated and will not be allowed to be on site at school with children post November 15. Photo / George Novak
The Bay of Plenty Times is looking back at the stories of 2021. Here's what made headlines in November.
Alice Taylor doesn't smoke, she keeps fit and doesn't eat meat.
That's why the news of a rare lung cancer diagnosis came as a big shock to the Tauranga physio.
"It was not on the radar at all."
The 41-year-old shared her story of an "out of the blue" diagnosis as part of Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November in a bid to raise awareness of the "silent cancer".
A small country school was set to lose its principal, a teacher and three other staff members when the education vaccination mandate kicked in.
Those interviewed said they would not get the Covid-19 vaccine, even if it meant losing their jobs.
The mandate required anyone who was in contact with children in an educational setting to have had their first vaccination dose by November 15 and be fully vaccinated by January 1.
That means from November 16, the five staff would not be allowed on the grounds of rural Rangiuru School, east of Tauranga, while children were present. Three teachers will remain at the full primary school, which has 85 students.
A school parent has described the loss of five staff as "pretty devastating for this small school".
An estimated 230 people will die and there will be almost 31,000 Covid-19 cases in the Bay of Plenty District Health Board area next year [2022] if an 80 per cent vaccination rate is achieved.
But the number of deaths would nearly halve and case numbers would drop to 20,000 if the area hit its 90 per cent target, new pandemic modelling figures show.
The Bay of Plenty DHB data, released to the Bay of Plenty Times, showed cases, deaths and hospitalisation rates for 2022 - with both an 80 per cent and 90 per cent vaccinated population.
The modelling figures show with an 80 per cent vaccination rate in the Bay of Plenty DHB area there would be 2200 hospitalisations, but at 90 per cent that would drop to 1200.
A Bay beauty spot could be made safer for visitors if a multimillion-dollar improvement project gets the green light.
Tauranga City Council and Ngāti Hangarau hapu applied for resource consent to establish a safe walking track at Omanawa Falls.
The track would lead to the edge of the waterfall pool, with viewing platforms over the falls, on-site car parking for 77 vehicles, public toilet facilities and a visitor centre. Up to three viewing platforms could be built, depending on funding.
The proposed visitor centre would include on-site accommodation for kaitiaki and staff and there was the potential to have a swing bridge in the future.
Andrew Leota will never forget what it was like to watch people die.
"The life was getting sucked out of them."
Lying on one of the last available intensive care unit beds in Kazakhstan's capital, Nur-Sultan, Leota could only breathe with the help of a respiratory mask.
He and five other Covid-19 patients were jammed into a room of about 36sq m that had been converted into an operating theatre, their beds pushed together.
"It was just beds by beds. We were all lying on our stomachs looking at each other."
He shared his story with Maryana Garcia.
Primary school pupils in Parkvale successfully convinced the Tauranga City Council commissioners to give Yatton Park a dual name in Māori and English.
The name Tutarawānanga will be added to signage in the reserve and will be formally recognised on supporting documents and records alongside Yatton Park.
It comes after Merivale School students lodged a name change request with the council in December 2020.
The commissioners approved the dual name for the park.
From thousands of cookies to sausages and muesli bars, the community turned the misfortunes of cancelled events into a good deed for those in need.
The Bay of Plenty Times' six-week Christmas Appeal for the Tauranga Community Foodbank launched on November 13.
It's been a year of the unexpected, with the return of Covid-19 in the community causing plans to suddenly change and events being cancelled.
"We weren't even aware that these events were planned, so whenever we got a phone call about [a donation], it was always a huge surprise," food bank manager Nicki Goodwin said.
Two confirmed Covid cases in Tauranga were labelled a "wake-up call" after the Ministry of Health confirmed the city's first cases in the Delta outbreak - one in Tauranga, understood to be in Pyes Pā - and the other in Mount Maunganui.
It forced the closure of a Pāpāmoa primary school due to the "strong likelihood" there was Covid-19 case among the school community.
This followed multiple Covid-positive wastewater samples from Tauranga and Mount Maunganui.
No one could say how far the virus may have spread in the city, but experts said high vaccination rates would be key to reducing transmission. Residents and visitors were also told to watch for locations of interest to be released and get tested immediately if they had even mild symptoms.
Abusive texts, swearing over the phone and angry confrontations.
That's the behaviour landlords and rental agency staff say they are having to deal with from angry would-be tenants who miss out on homes as the rental market tightens.
Other hopefuls are offering landlords sweeteners such as six months' rent in advance as they battle for homes and rental costs reach record levels in the Bay of Plenty.
The youngest person ever elected to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council will not stand at the next election because of abuse and ageism.
Stacey Rose was elected unopposed in the 2019 local body election when he was 19.
Rose, now 22, has become a member of Komiti Māori, Monitoring and Operations Committee, Public Transport Committee, Strategy and Policy Committee, Tauranga Moana Advisory Group, and has been actively involved in leading greater youth involvement with the council.
Rose admitted adjustment from his original career as a barber to that of regional councillor was challenging but "when it came to the crunch, I made the decision not to re-stand after having a whole lot of abuse".
The centres say changing their primary health organisation will help avoid fee increases.