South Auckland primary schools are considering whether to host vaccine clinics to help vaccinate the region's 5 to 11-year-olds.
File photo. Photo: Ina Fassbender / AFP
Principals in the area say Counties Manukau DHB has asked them to allow vaccinations on their sites.
The lead principal of the Alfriston Kahui Ako or Community of Learning, Cathy Chalmers, said its eight member schools enrolled about 4500 children between them and were considering getting involved.
Chalmers said each school would make its own decision, but it would help local families if they cooperated.
"Even though they might have students at Randwick Park or Greenmeadows Intermediate or Alfriston College, they could just go to one of those schools. So we're kind of looking at having rolling events at all of the schools so that parents have more options of when's convenient for them and it just gives greater flexibility," she said.
Chalmers said there was no pressure for children to get vaccinated and those under the age of 12 could not be vaccinated without their parents' permission but school-based clinics would make it a lot easier for families to vaccinate their children.
"Sometimes it's challenging to get children to be vaccinated. We've got shift workers, we've got parents who don't have vehicles, there's a whole raft of reasons why it's a challenge for some people in our community to pop along to the vaccination centre. We're just trying to make the access easier."
Other South Auckland schools were also considering helping the DHB.
Clendon Park School principal Sue Dawson said she had fielded more questions from parents about vaccinations than about back-to-school arrangements.
"They haven't asked very many questions about being at school, they've most asked about do we have to be vaccinated, are the vaccinated and non-vaccinated going to be separated, and actually the answer to that is no, it's almost impossible for a school to be able to separate those into class groups," she said.
Dawson said the school had already hosted three vaccine clinics, the most recent on Saturday with local Māori health provider Te Hononga.
"We had adults coming for their boosters, we had 12-plus age group children coming in, we had first shots, and then we had our 5-11-year-olds coming in and it was lovely to see because people came in their family groups."
Dawson said there was no trouble from anti-vaccination protesters and the school would be happy to host more clinics, though it would prefer to work with Te Hononga because it was a trusted local provider.
Rowandale School principal Karl Vasau said it made sense for schools to help with the Covid vaccination effort though he stressed that vaccinations were not mandatory for children.
"If just means that more of our children and the environment we're in is a lot safer. We already have 100 percent vaccination status for staff working on site while children are at school so in order to strengthen that, having children that are also vaccinated is important," he said.
Vasau said vaccine clinics needed to run in a manner that ensured people did not feel embarrassed or under pressure because of their attitudes to the vaccination.