Public health experts say New Zealand should close all schools to protect from the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest confirmed case involving a Dunedin high school adds more weight to that argument.
But the Ministry of Education says the country is not at that stage yet and schools should remain open.
“Send your kids to school, school at the moment is a very, very, safe place for them to be," Education Minister Chris Hipkins told 1 NEWS.
“If that changes then of course our advice will change, but at the moment there are no community outbreaks in New Zealand."
However, not everyone agrees with his comments.
“You only have one opportunity at containment and once you've lost that it's very difficult to come back,” Otago University’s Michael Baker says.
Mr Baker's been talking to his colleagues in the US and Australia, who he says agree New Zealand should shut all schools.
“We need to be doing a thousand or more tests a day in different sites across the country to confirm we don't have community transmission and we need to do that for several weeks.”
The teenage student who tested positive at Logan Park High School is the child of a man who tested positive for coronavirus earlier today after recently returning from a trip to Germany.
The school will be closed for 48 hours while close contacts are traced and put into self-isolation.
It will also be subjected to a deep clean before re-opening.
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