Goonengerry Public School in the Byron Shire impacted by nasty flu outbreak after warnings to get kids vaccinated

At least one North Coast school has been forced to offer only “minimal supervision” for students after a flu outbreak. It comes as authorities urge parents statewide to vaccinate children.

At least one North Coast school has been forced to offer only “minimal supervision” for students after a flu outbreak.

The influenza surge at Goonengerry Public School in the Byron Shire comes after NSW Health urged parents to get children vaccinated against the virus.

The department declared in late June “flu cases continue to rise among children” and revealed kids had been admitted to hospital intensive care units in Sydney.

Children developed serious cardiac, neurological, and muscle-related complications.

The department said in late July that “children and young people continue to dominate influenza notification rates” and this week’s overall flu activity “has stabilised” but “remains at moderate levels”.

Goonengerry Public School in Byron Shire has been battling the flu.

The Goonengerry school aired the issues it has had with the flu in its term 3, week 4 newsletter published August 8.

“A massive thankyou for your understanding last week when the school had to go into minimal supervision due to the extreme amount of illness within the school and community,” the newsletter reads.

“Once again our school and community have had to show great resilience under very difficult circumstances.

“We had all our teaching staff affected in some way by the influenza virus and with casual teachers in high demand it was difficult to maintain our teacher student numbers.

“It was also an appropriate measure to try and stop the infection moving between our students and families.”

NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant speaking about influenza and vaccinations in May. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Nikki Short

The small school said that “very few students” were not affected by the virus over the last two or three weeks, but the kids were “slowly” returning.

“Several events were affected and our school was unable to support the Federal Pre-school day in the park, which was very disappointing, as we love to support our preschool friends,” the newsletter reads.

“Our planned excursion to Byron Bay Public School to utilise their STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) lab had to be put back for a couple of weeks.”
The school also revealed its concert had to be pushed back to term 4.

A Department of Education spokesperson said: “We are very pleased that Goonengerry Public School has returned to normal operations and thank the community for their support.”

“Respiratory illnesses are currently circulating and preventing the spread of illness is a priority for our schools,” they said.

The Department of Education has warned respiratory illnesses like the flu are circulating.

“The department meets regularly with NSW Health to discuss case data, including on the prevalence of influenza, Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses, such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

“This is done to ensures the Department is aware of the latest trends in case numbers to continue to support schools through messaging and risk mitigation strategies developed in collaboration with NSW Health.”

The department said it was important to have kids in school, learning in classrooms.

“But we must balance this with the health, safety and wellbeing of students and staff.”

The Northern NSW Local Health District has been contacted for comment and more information.