The science behind Government's decision to re-open schools.

The following information was provided by the Ministry of Education and Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 

Health and safety of students is key to any decision.  

The Government announced New Zealand will move to Alert Level 3 at 11.59pm on Monday 27th April. Schools can reopen from, at the earliest, Wednesday April 29 to provide education to those families who need it. They urge those families whose students can learn from home to continue to do so.

Quotes from Dr Ashley Bloomfield, Director-General of Health about Education

Our experience in New Zealand and overseas with COVID-19 over the last three months shows that it does not infect or affect children and teens in the same way it does adults.

So children and teens have low infection rates, they don't become that unwell if they do get infected, and they don't tend to pass the virus on to adults.

The two key public health principles that support Alert Level 3 are first to minimise the risk that someone gets infected in the first place, and second to limit the number of possible contacts people have if they do get infected to make it easier to rapidly stop further spread.

The Alert level 3 approach in a school environment is designed to limit the number of people that children have contact with based on these principles. And because all the evidence points to children having a lower risk of getting infected and being affected by COVID-19, and it is possible to ensure that children are within the same group each day with no mixing between groups, it is safe from a public health perspective to have a group of children learning together. At this point, our advice is to limit this to 10 children in each group, but this could be increased to up to 20 children once schools have all their procedures running smoothly.

Parents can have confidence that the proposed approach is designed to keep children and their families safe, to keep staff safe and to support the country's overall response to COVID-19 to 'keep it out and stamp it out'.

And it is important that parents fully support this approach by doing their bit - keeping children home if they are unwell and seeking medical advice about whether a child may need to be tested; strictly maintaining their family 'bubble' outside the ECE or school environment; and ensuring great hygiene practices at all times.