As winter approaches, so do the germs, and Dr Amanda Kvalsvig wants schools to clean classroom air for children. Photo: Luke Pilkinton-Ching
The quality of air inside school classrooms is so poor that winter bugs quickly spread from children to their families and communities, contributing to cases of Covid-19, asthma and other illnesses at hospital emergency departments, an epidemiologist with a background in paediatrics says.
Teachers are also being struck down, according to Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, who told Saturday Morning more cases of long Covid are cropping up, rendering them unable to work.
It comes as health authorities brace for what is thought to be a new, more infectious subvariant of Covid following a surge in detections.
Kvalsvig is a member of advocacy group Aotearoa Covid Action, which is currently petitioning to make changes to air quality in schools in an effort to control the spread of Covid-19, which it claims there is no longer a "credible plan" for.
"It's as if the infections in schools is like, setting off a train of dominoes that there's this wave right through the community every winter."
She said it was as if New Zealand was being tested for how well-prepared it was for the next pandemic, and "every winter we fail that test".
"What that means is... [if the next pandemic] gets through our borders without our knowing it, unless we're very lucky, it's going to go straight through the schools.
"And we know that because that's what happens every winter with all the other viruses; flu, Covid, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and the rest."
It was a situation that needed turning around, Kvalsvig said.
"If we make the air in schools safe... every classroom we do that is another building block in our pandemic preparedness."
She said people had been burned out by the pandemic, and with "pandemic amnesia" setting in, air filters that were introduced at some schools in 2022 were not always remembered or switched on.
"People are just so over it. They don't want to think about it even though in fact Covid is very much still with us and all those other viruses - people can't bring themselves to really think about it and address it."
Kvalsvig wanted to "completely turn this situation on its head" and make school "one of the safest places a child can be".
"That the air in school classrooms is clean and fresh, it's protecting them from infections, it's helping them to stay alert and learning. It's also protecting them from air pollution, which damages children's lungs and brains."
Ventilation was needed to bring fresh air into the classroom and filtration cleaned the air, Kvalsvig said.
Other layers of protection included staying home when sick, and using a specific UV light to kill viruses, which would be "as simple as switching a light on".
It was not as simple as just opening a window, she said.
Kvalsvig told RNZ presenter Susie Ferguson she was surprised New Zealand was not doing more about the issue because a 2022 government study showed teachers were at the top of professions at risk from Covid-19.
"I was sorry to see that no action came out of that big study."
She said there was a need for a Covid strategy to co-ordinate against it and the illnesses it can trigger.
Asked whether it would be safe for under 18-year-olds to have a vaccine booster, Kvalsvig said it was "absolutely clear" in research done on millions of children and young people that it would be beneficial to their health. In the United States this week Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said the country would no longer offer Covid-19 vaccines to children and pregnant women.
Meanwhile, Kvalsvig was also the lead researcher of Co-Search, a Covid-19 research collaborative led by Professor Michael Baker, as well as SYMBIOTIC, a programme that aimed to investigate the two-way relationships between infectious disease and long-term conditions.
She said there was a social justice element to Covid-19 - marginalised people, those with underlying conditions and also people who had had Covid already were at risk of developing new conditions.
"Pandemics tend to cast these very long shadows of ill-health in populations, so long after the emergency phase has passed, that shadow persists."
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