Students and staff at Albany Senior High School in Tāmaki Makaurau are being asked to stay away from school while public health staff identify close contacts of an infectious measles case last week, with the school closed today.
A student was on location while infectious on April 27 and 28. All household contacts are currently in quarantine, public health authorities said on Wednesday. One other case has been confirmed.
Te Whai Ora chief medical officer Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen isn't calling it an outbreak just yet, though. He confirmed to teaomāori.news earlier today that a household contact of the infectious case now also has measles, but is still worried that there could be a potential outbreak.
“We think about a young kid at high school who will be going to all of those different classrooms, those sort of big, open-plan classrooms. Lots of exposure there.
“We’re worried we’re going to get more cases and so bringing it to the attention of everybody, there’s a lot of work to kind of knock that down and see if we can get that eliminated.”
It's not a measles outbreak... yet.
Jansen is adamant that getting young people vaccinated for measles now will help.
A team of health officials are currently undergoing testing for students and staff, and vaccination centres will also be set up starting today and tomorrow “to get everybody vaccinated that we can”.
“To be honest we’re going to offer all of the vaccinations that we can. The measles one is really important right now, the influenza one is important right now, Covid boosters, all of those things right now are critical.”
He’s also looking at Auckland’s neighbouring regions, Northland and Waikato, to urge measles vaccination efforts to get ahead of the spread.
Public health officials may also ask anyone at schools or ECE who is not vaccinated, depending on the spread, to stay at home. “That’s the only way we can protect unvaccinated people,” Jansen says.
“We’re going to see some pretty disruptive actions if we get an outbreak.”
