Focus: Schools under pressure as Covid and other illnesses cause staff shortages

Another wave of Covid-19 could be on its way with a new Omicron subvariant seeing case numbers back on the rise. Video / NZ Herald / Ben Cummins

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Schools across the country are struggling to find enough staff with Covid cases back on the rise and other winter illnesses taking hold.

Covid cases from the new Omicron subvariant BA.5 are doubling every week and it could thrust New Zealand back to our March peak of about 25,000 daily infections, according to modellers.

Today, 9629 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the community.

Schools such as Auckland's Carmel College have reverted to online learning for the rest of the week with high case numbers among staff.

"On Monday morning when we had to get a reliever for a reliever for a reliever, we realised that we can't sustain this for the rest of the week," principal Chris Allen told Focus.

"Towards the end of last week, we were getting to the stage where we were averaging about 20 per cent of our students away and 25 per cent of our staff away."

Papatoetoe High School principal Vaughan Couillault said schools were taking varying measures to combat staff shortages.

"We had to roster home Year 9s last Friday because we had a combination of staff away for non-illness-related matters as well as a little bit of cold and flu stuff," Couillault said.

"Some schools are sending students home at lunchtime every day, other schools are doing complete online learning, others might not be doing anything, so there's a range of the needs each school has in terms of staffing to meet the needs of the community and the illnesses they're facing at the moment."

Auckland University Covid modeller Dr David Welch says the latest outbreak could peak by the end of the month.

Dr David Welch. Photo / Jed Bradley

"Modelling had suggested if we carried on with the BA.2 variant, we'd see that wave probably in a couple of months. But with BA.5, which is substantially more transmissible, it seems to have a real growth advantage against the other variants around [and] it's arrived quite a bit earlier," Welch said.

"It's not easy to model. But it's quite plausible and possible that the peak of this wave will be as high as the peak of the previous wave [March] and that's in the context of a winter flu season going on at the same time."