I thought it would be helpful if we shared some questions and answers from the Ministry of Health that respond to queries that have been received recently from a Canterbury specific perspective.

Children and young people attending school when they are unwell; 

Public health advice regarding sick children and school attendance has not changed in the COVID-19 era. Children who are unwell should not attend school and they should not return to school until they have been symptom free for at least 48 hours. This applies to infectious respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, and vaccine preventable diseases. If their illness is not an infectious one, for example, it results from an injury or a chronic disease like diabetes, and they are well enough to attend school then they can do so. 

COVID-19 like symptoms will be very common over the winter and the vast majority of children with those symptoms won’t have COVID-19. So, the advice to parents whose children have symptoms of cough, fever, sore throat and/or runny nose and sneezing is for them to keep their child at home until they have been symptom free for 48 hours. If they do see a GP or call Healthline on 0800 358 5453 and they are swabbed then the child will need to be isolated at home until they have their result. They can return to school if their result is negative and they have been symptom-free for 48 hours. In most situations, the rest of their household do not also need to self-isolate. That means that siblings of the ill child, regardless of where they go to school, can attend school while the test result for the ill child is awaited. The only exception is if the child being tested is a symptomatic close contact of a case. In that case, we ask that their household members do self-isolate while awaiting the test result. This exception is unlikely to occur in a school as any child (or adult) who is identified as a close contact of a case will already be in self-quarantine. 

Can we require a child who has been unwell be tested for COVID-9? 

We have been advised that schools, like employers are not able to compel COVID-19 testing. We know from what has been documented overseas, that children with COVID-19 tend to have mild symptoms, and also not to transmit the disease very effectively (which is in contrast to many other respiratory virus infections, like flu, that they are very good at spreading). 

We have received questions about families from COVID-19 confirmed clusters? 

We have received some enquiries about children of Rosewood staff for example. We have been advised that children of Rosewood staff who have contracted COVID-19 will have been managed as close contacts of their case parent. What that means is that they will have been isolated with their parent until the time the parent recovered and became non-infectious. The child contact will then have been in quarantine for a further 14 days after that date (to ensure that they too haven’t been infected). As long as they have remained well, they are then released and can back to school as normal with no risk to anyone. 

Ministry of Health Website
As you know, there are a number of families who remain anxious about their children and young people returning to early learning, school and kura and we’ve been looking at how we can provide greater reassurance for them that schools, kura and early learning services are safe. We’ve spoken with the All of Government Covid team and they agree that one way to help is to present communities with the data on Covid-19 cases in New Zealand, which tells the story.

There are two graphs on the Ministry of Health website that help show the picture of what is happening in Canterbury.