Protecting school communities from COVID-19 and other infectious disease outbreaks: the urgent need for healthy schools in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This editorial focuses on the urgent need to improve infection control and health protections in Aotearoa New Zealand’s schools to mitigate COVID-19 and other infectious disease outbreaks. It highlights that during the 2022 Omicron wave, New Zealand schools were high-risk settings for transmission, with significant impacts on student health, educational attainment, and teacher occupational safety, exacerbated by insufficient mitigation measures and inequitable resource distribution. The authors propose a science-led, whānau-centred approach grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles, emphasizing goals such as ensuring excellent indoor air quality, supporting isolation of infectious individuals, providing rapid access to masks during outbreaks, enabling equitable online learning, and establishing robust surveillance systems. Implementing these measures aims to protect students, staff, and their communities, reduce health inequities, and enhance pandemic preparedness within the education sector.