Just 15 days ago Education Minister Chris Hipkins stated very publicly that schools, universities, polytechnics and early-childhood centres are “very, very safe places” to be, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
A great deal has happened in the 15 days since he made that stupid statement. One of the worst clusters of COVID-19 infection is Marist College:
Auckland girls’ school Marist College has 47 confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 – the biggest cluster of infection being tracked by health authorities.
The board chairman Stephen Dallow says the confirmed cases include teachers, students and adults within the community.
The entire school of about 750 students, as well as staff, are classed as close contacts and they have been asked to keep to strict self-isolation rules.
Seventy-six new cases of the virus were confirmed around New Zealand on Monday, bringing the total to 589.
Earlier, the mother of a year 10 student at Auckland’s Marist College told the Herald she was worried there could be “an explosion” of cases if three school communities were not tested for Covid-19.
Some students from Lynfield College and Mt Albert Grammar have ridden in the same school bus as Marist College students while they were infectious, and are considered to be “casual contacts”.
The mother should be worried, but testing now won’t stop the community spread associated with this school. There are a large number of other variables.
Forget school buses and trains. In the immediate vicinity of the school is the Westfield St Lukes shopping centre. What is the likelihood that teenage girls went there after school while infected? Then there is the New World on the corner. Did any students have part-time jobs there or at nearby Countdown? Did they go shopping there?
Then there is the community swimming pool at the Mt Albert Aquatic Centre. And how many had boyfriends at neighbouring Mt Albert Grammar School? Indeed what about all the other schools that boyfriends go to?
This Hipkins cluster bomb is going to go off. There are now literally thousands of people associated with connections to this school, their pupils and everywhere they’ve been and touched.
It isn’t the students’ fault, they are teenagers after all and will do what teenagers do. They and their parents and teachers were told that schools were “very, very safe places to be” by Education Minister Chris Hipkins.
If he was even half-decent he’d realise his tragic error and resign forthwith. He won’t, of course, so this cluster bomb is on him.
Just fifteen days ago Chris Hipkins lied, and we now have a likely cluster bomb going off.
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