Over 80 students and staff from a Waikato school are isolating after a Year 7 pupil who was at school last week tested positive for Covid. 

The school was one of two in the region to learn they had a positive case over the long weekend. 

On the evening of the first day back at school, last Thursday, Hamilton Christian School principal Shaun Brooker said he was informed by the family of the case that they had become close contacts. 

He was told yesterday that the family's test had come back positive. 

The school then scrambled to identify close contacts and notify parents during the Waitangi Day long weekend. 

Eighty students and seven staff members were considered close contacts and were required to self-isolate and get tested. 

"I am disappointed for all the families who heard mid-way through the long weekend break that they needed to return home and isolate," said Brooker. 

Hamilton Christian School students and staff are isolating after a pupil tested positive for the virus. Photo / Google Maps 

Brooker believe up to 50 additional students and staff would be considered to be secondary contacts and that they are still working to determine who they are. 

In a post on the school's Facebook page, it said all secondary contacts were required to self-isolate until the close contact returned a day five negative test. 

Meanwhile, parents of Rototuna Junior and Senior High School students were also sent a message yesterday that a Covid-infected person was at school for two days last week. 

Emails had been sent to all families of close contacts, according to a post made to the schools Facebook page. 

It also indicated that the school hoped to run programmes as "close to normal as possible" this week. 

Currently there are 234 active cases in the Waikato. 

- by Caitlan Johnston, NZ Herald