The New Zealand Labor Party-led government is systematically removing lockdown restrictions in Auckland, the center of a growing COVID-19 outbreak, and telling people they must accept a significant increase in cases.
Yesterday the Minister’s response to Covid-19, Chris Hipkins, who is also Education Minister, announced that schools would reopen next week for all students in 11th to 13th, the three upper levels.
This extremely reckless decision will put thousands of students and school staff at risk of contracting COVID-19, becoming ill and spreading it throughout the community. Schools have played a major role in the current outbreak, which began in August, with 35% of cases among people aged 19 and under.
While the government claims to follow “public health advice,” in reality its policies are dictated by the demands of big business. He has rejected calls by many scientists for a tighter lockdown in Auckland and has already partially reopened schools and childcare centers.
Internationally, the reopening of schools is a key demand of the financial and business elite, regardless of the dangers to people’s lives. The aim is to pave the way for parents to return to work so that the extraction of the benefits of the working class can fully resume.
In the United States, where unions have collaborated with the far right to reopen schools, nearly 2 million children have been infected, 6,523 hospitalized and killed 200 since July 29. No one knows how many teachers have died; the School Personnel Lost to Covid group has counted more than 1,600 deaths. The pandemic has killed more than 748,000 people in the United States and approximately 15 million worldwide.
Until recently, New Zealand was seen as a role model by scientists and workers due to the country’s stated policy of eliminating COVID-19. This has so far limited deaths coronavirus only 28. On 4 October, however, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that there would be a “transition” away from elimination.
Since September 22, when the government relaxed in Auckland locking the “alert level 4” to the “level 3”, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to return to work, the scale of the epidemic s’ is considerably extended. Active cases have nearly quadrupled from a low of 202 on September 28 to 868 so far. Most cases are in Auckland, with 54 in the neighboring Waikato region.
Hipkins’ announcement that more than half of Auckland’s high school students can return to school came the day after New Zealand recorded 94 new community cases of COVID-19 – the biggest daily increase so far. ‘to today, when 102 cases have been reported.
Speaking to Radio NZ, Hipkins said casually that the number of cases is expected to double “every two weeks”, the daily rate will soon exceed 200. The infectious disease expert at the University of Auckland, Mark Thomas, said Thing that he expected “we will see over 500 cases a day”.
This will lead to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. There are currently 46 people with COVID-19 in the hospital. An emergency nurse told Radio NZ that the hospital staff “are feeling really anxious. They feel like a tsumani is coming. At present, his service is regularly short of three or four people.
Dr Dion O’Neale, a COVID-19 modeller who advised the government, told Radio NZ that a “relatively small increase in the number of infections in schools” was likely to cause a “much larger” increase in community transmission.
O’Neale warned that current mitigation measures in schools, including advice to wash hands and stay home when unwell, are “at the absolute lower end of what we would expect. to be put in place to reduce transmission “. He called for air filtration systems, better ventilation and widespread testing on students.
Vaccination is compulsory for school staff. Students are required to wear masks, but should not be vaccinated. By itself, vaccination is not enough to prevent transmission. New Zealand’s immunization level – only 55% of the total population has received both doses – is lower than in countries like the UK and US, where COVID-19 is spreading rapidly and killing people. hundreds or thousands of people every week.
The Post-Primary Teachers Association (PPTA), clearly under pressure from teachers, said many were “dismayed and angry” that schools were reopened amid the surge in cases. President Melanie Webber said the government “appears to have gone from over-caution to reckless disregard of consequences, in the blink of an eye.”
The union, however, did not call a strike to protect teachers and students. In the aftermath of the initial outbreak of March 2020, the PPTA resisted calls by teachers and healthcare workers to close schools, with Webber falsely declaring them to be “safe places.” The union did not change its position until the day Ardern announced a nationwide lockdown.
A relative from Auckland, whose wife is a teacher, told the World Socialist Website that the Labor government had turned out to be “the wolf in sheep’s clothing.” They obviously gave up on elimination… and the strategy was to blame the public for not following the rules. He said the city should have remained in a Level 4 lockdown, with any reopening tied to vaccination warrants.
“The PPTA made noise this time … but I doubt they do anything when things are going well,” he said. Her family bubble includes two elderly people, one of whom suffers from serious respiratory problems. His wife is waiting to see what the union will do before returning to work. When his school principal was asked at a recent staff meeting what safeguards were in place, they became “upset and couldn’t answer the question correctly.”
The government is expected to reveal more reopening plans in the coming days, amid increasing pressure from big business and the media to drop the lockdown. The National Opposition Party wants December 1 to be designated as “Freedom Day” with the restrictions completely lifted. The term ‘Freedom Day’ was used by the UK government to promote its reopening on July 19 – a homicide policy that has resulted in an increase in the number of cases and hundreds of deaths per week.
New Zealand’s Socialist Equality Group is calling on workers, including parents and teachers, to oppose reopening of schools as COVID-19 continues to spread. We urge readers to participate in and help promote our Saturday 4:30 p.m. online meeting, which will explain the need for grassroots and neighborhood safety committees, independent of unions, to fight for a science policy aimed at eliminating virus. The speakers will discuss the important example given by parents in the UK, who led two school strikes in opposition to the reopening of the Johnson administration policy.
