More than a quarter of the pupils at a Whakatāne primary school were away sick on Monday, one of the clearest signs yet that New Zealand’s unusually late influenza season is now landing hardest on the places least able to absorb it. Schools are combining classes, rest homes are short of staff, and hospital surveillance data shows Auckland has just recorded the highest rate of severe respiratory illness since national reporting of it began in 2012.
Apanui School principal Marama Stewart told 1News that 125 of the school’s 439 students and 10 teachers were absent on Monday, forcing the school to merge classes and cancel assemblies. She said her school was not the worst affected in the district.
“We’re not even the worst off. We’ve had schools in our area close yesterday because they didn’t have the staff,” Stewart said.
What stood out to her was not the size of the spike, which she described as a “pretty typical bell-curve”, but what the children were arriving with. Pupils were turning up sick with influenza alongside respiratory syncytial virus, strep throat and, in some cases, rheumatic fever. Stewart said that level of complex illness was “not really seen in this kind of socioeconomic index of the school or the community”, and she believed it was a “strong reflection” of the number of children living in poverty.
The knock-on effect she described has nothing to do with viruses at all. Parents were running out of paid sick leave and could not afford to keep taking time off. “They’re having to take unpaid time, and they’re really struggling – and they’re having to send their kids back to school too early,” she said. In a household with leave to spare, a sick child is an inconvenience. In a household without it, the same illness becomes a choice between a pay packet and keeping a child home until they are well, and the second option quietly loses.
The same staffing squeeze is showing up in aged residential care. Aged Care Association chief executive Tracey Martin said providers had reported outbreaks of acute respiratory illness and influenza-like illness, particularly in parts of the South Island, although those cases could not all be confirmed as influenza. Two residents died during an outbreak at a 103-bed North Island facility, with influenza A considered the “likely cause”, Martin said. “The facility has also experienced significant staff sickness, which has created some additional operational pressure.”
Martin said the feedback so far did not suggest the surge was worse across the whole sector. “Several facilities have reported no influenza cases at all, while others are seeing the usual range of winter colds and respiratory illnesses and are managing these within their facilities.” Influenza vaccination among residents remained relatively high at somewhere between 86 and 96 per cent, she said, while staff rates were considerably lower. “A number of providers have commented that willingness among staff to receive influenza vaccination has declined since the Covid period.”
The surveillance numbers behind all of this come from PHF Science, the Crown research institute formerly known as ESR, which tracks severe acute respiratory illness admissions at four Auckland hospitals as a national early-warning system. In the week to 16 August there were 177 such admissions, up from 125 the week before.
PHF Science public health physician Dr Hannah Cooper said in comments released by the Science Media Centre that severe acute respiratory illness rates in the Auckland region “were the highest we have seen since this reporting began in 2012”. Influenza was the main driver, at levels close to those seen in 2022, but Cooper pointed to a second factor. “What is different this year is that other respiratory virus activity is higher, particularly RSV and rhinovirus, contributing to the very high overall picture. All indicators suggest COVID-19 activity remains very low.”
Cooper said the dominant strain was influenza A/H3 subclade K, the variant behind a heavy Northern Hemisphere season. It “has evolved to be quite different to other influenza A/H3 strains that have circulated in recent seasons and so there is little natural immunity in the population, contributing to its high transmissibility”. She noted that in the Northern Hemisphere there was no indication the strain caused more severe illness in any individual patient, and that the season there was hard because of the sheer number of cases rather than their severity. The Southern Hemisphere vaccine was updated ahead of winter to match it, and Cooper said laboratory data to date indicates the circulating strains do match.
University of Canterbury mathematician Professor Michael Plank said the season started unusually late and then moved fast. “After an unusually late start to the season, influenza levels have rocketed over the last few weeks and are now close to their highest level in 4 years,” he said, adding that the last comparable year was the post-pandemic rebound of 2022 and that the current growth rate could push past that peak before spring.
Hospitals are absorbing the difference. Medical Research Institute of New Zealand senior clinical research fellow Dr Ruth Semprini said “our ED is currently always over capacity, with people waiting in corridors overnight, awaiting admission to hospital”, and that “hospitals are cancelling planned surgeries and using those beds for emergency admissions from the emergency department”. Ambulance services hit the same wall earlier in the month. Hato Hone St John activated a major incident response on 9 August after taking 2562 calls in a single day against a normal day of around 1900, with director of ambulance operations Doug Gallagher saying call handlers were at one point “answering a call every 20 seconds”.
University of Otago public health professor Michael Baker argued the country should stop treating each winter as a surprise and build a standing risk framework instead, along the lines of the graduated systems already used for weather and fire danger. “Aotearoa New Zealand already uses graduated systems to communicate changing risks from weather, fire danger and other hazards,” he said, suggesting a respiratory risk scale could cover influenza, Covid-19 and RSV together, escalating from baseline advice to measures such as masks in waiting rooms and extra protection for people in aged residential care.
Employers and Manufacturers Association head of advocacy Alan McDonald told the BNZ Business Breakfast it had otherwise been “quite a normal season”, but that small firms were feeling it. “We’ve heard of some situations where it’s kind of been all hands to the pump. They’ve run out of staff, so the management are chipping in to get a container out the door or get an order out the door.”
Because the season began late, it may also end late, which would put the tail of it into spring and into the school term rather than the holidays.
How has your school, workplace or family fared this winter, and does New Zealand need a standing respiratory risk system like the one Michael Baker describes? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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