Grey Lynn School makes mask-wearing compulsory as Covid, winter illnesses hit

An inner city Auckland primary school is the latest to return to compulsory mask-wearing as winter illnesses take hold.

From Tuesday Grey Lynn School is requiring all students Year 4 and up to wear masks indoors, and encouraging younger students to do so as well.

The decision isn't just about stopping Covid - it's also trying to prevent staff falling ill at such a rate that the school will have to close, forcing kids back to learning from home.

A newsletter from the board of trustees said five staff had tested positive for Covid-19 in the past fortnight, and many students were also isolating. Influenza and other respiratory viruses had also begun spreading in Auckland.

The board had decided on May 30 to reintroduce compulsory masking for years 4-6, while years 0-3 would also be "strongly encouraged" to mask. Adults would continue to be required to wear masks indoors, it said.

"We are doing this in order to protect our school community from illness and increase the likelihood that we will continue to be able to offer in-person teaching throughout the winter months."

It comes as Auckland continues to dominate New Zealand's Covid cases, with 2997 cases reported in the city over the past two days of the total 10,191 across New Zealand.

That's contributed to high rates of illness among teachers, with many high schools moving back to rostered learning because there aren't enough staff to supervise classes.

Grey Lynn's board chair Stewart Reynolds told the Herald the decision was about both Covid and increasing rates of other winter illnesses.

"It's all about keeping the school open as long as possible, keeping the children learning, seeing them happy. Because they love being back".

Students had suffered significant disruption to their learning over the last couple of years, he said.

"We are concerned as a board that should our teaching population, a significant portion of them, contract or be directly associated with a Covid case and have to isolate - we don't want to be in a position where we can't staff the rooms and effectively can't get relief teachers."

The policy would be regularly reviewed "until we're comfortable that the downside risk of closing the school ... is very low".

Under the orange traffic light setting, the Ministry of Education says masks are "strongly encouraged" but not compulsory, unless a school decides to enforce a mask-wearing rule.

Reynolds said he didn't have the expertise to comment on whether the Government should impose a blanket masking policy for schools.

But many public health experts want such a policy. More than 150 doctors and scientists signed an open letter calling for winter masking along with better indoor air quality measures in schools, including CO2 monitoring and HEPA air purifiers in every classroom.

Among them is epidemiologist Michael Baker, who was very pleased to hear of Grey Lynn's move to cut transmission risk.

Some schools have made mask-wearing compulsory again heading into winter. Photo / 123RF

The University of Otago professor of public health said masks were great because they cut the risk from Covid, influenza and RSV among other illnesses, and were effective for all age groups.

Classrooms were high-risk environments, and only a quarter of 5-to-11-year-olds were double vaccinated, he said.

He said he and his colleagues from the University of Otago were "totally supportive" of keeping children at school and learning as much as possible but it was important to make the classroom safe while they were there.

"We're just concerned that on the one hand you want to say yes, we must keep these kids at school, but then you're not using all the tools you can have available to keep them there."

Baker also believed schools needed a threshold when they could say it was no longer sensible to stay open - but wanted such guidelines worked out nationally, "rather than leaving all the schools to have to wade through this quite complex decision-making themselves".

Auckland community and developmental paediatrician Dr Jin Russell said it was a "wise move" for schools to make masks compulsory and those boards were showing it could be done.

Although community Covid case numbers seemed low, there were likely many cases that weren't being picked up, and viruses like influenza were circulating through a population that had not been exposed to them.

Russell said she understood there was a high legal bar for Cabinet to enforce mask mandates in schools, "but from a public health point of view, universal masking in any indoor space where lots of people gather makes sense if the goal is to reduce infection and illness".

"What we would like to see is children being able to be in school as safely as possible. This is a particularly difficult winter. So I would stand by school boards who have made that decision for their communities."

Some schools have stuck with mask-wearing throughout the Omicron outbreak, while others have only recently made it compulsory.

Others have made it a temporary measure. Last week Cashmere High School reintroduced mask wearing for two weeks as a "circuit breaker" due to high rates of illness. Kaipara College and Rosehill Intermediate and Wesley College and Ōtāhuhu College have made similar decisions.

Pt Chevalier Primary moved back to masking last month, with principal Stephen Lethbridge saying it was "prudent that we make sure we keep staff and kids as safe as possible".