More than 100 pupils absent daily at Auckland school as winter illness hits

Author: Herald Reporters,
Publish Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2026, 8:49pm

Point Chevalier School had about 100 students away each day last week. Photo / Google Maps

More than 100 pupils at a central Auckland primary school were absent each day last week – the majority with illness – with class sizes as low as nine.

It comes as Hato Hone St John yesterday announced a major incident response as winter sickness increased demand.

Point Chevalier School principal Stephen Lethbridge told the Herald the daily number of absent students started at about 110 and peaked at 140.

The majority of absences were for illness, he said.

“We had lots of reports of people testing positive for the flu.”

With a roll of about 600, the absences were noticeable as some classes only had nine pupils.

The level of absence has not been observed in “quite a long time”, leading the school to send a message to parents.

“It did prompt us to just tell parents, ‘hey look, you know, there’s a wave coming through and just to keep an eye on kids and influenza A is quite contagious, so if there are any illnesses, just please keep your children at home’,” Lethbridge said.

About 100 students and some staff were off sick today.

Some staff have been off sick for a week, Lethbridge said.

“It’s very important for kids to be at school. However, it’s not good to have sick kids at school.”

Hato Hone St John director of ambulance operations Doug Gallagher yesterday said “sustained heavy demand” on the emergency ambulance service would impact patients and the public.

On Saturday, 2562 calls for an ambulance went through 111 – the highest number received in a single day. A normal day was about 1900 calls.

Gallagher said it was the third time the daily record had been broken this week, with 2404 calls on Monday and 2454 on Thursday.

Gallagher said winter illnesses were driving demand for service.

“It’s interesting ... it’s been a relatively mild winter up until about a week or a week and a half ago, and that’s where we started to see the sudden spike in demand for our services,” he said.

“I would expect that that’s related to the weather snap that we’ve had within the last couple of weeks.”