Chile has started vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 to ensure return to face-to-face lessons

This Monday started in Chile vaccination of teachers and other members of the education system. The task, which involves inoculating more than half a million people, aims to ensure the return of face-to-face classes to more than 3.6 million students in March.

Although the start of this stage of the plan has been set for February 22, Sebastián Piñera’s government has decided to bring it forward by one week. On this first day, 54,000 people over 60 will be vaccinated. “Over the days, other ages will be added,” explained the Minister of Health of the Andean country, Enrique Paris.

Inoculating this group will help Chile reach 2 million vaccinated in the next few hours. The government expects to reach 5 million by the end of March.

As the new stage begins, the Minister of Education, Raúl Figueroa, said that “students should be at the center of our concerns” and underlined the need to “start the school year in March, with all safety measures, respecting all protocols“.

Beyond the countryside, Minister Paris explained that children “transmit very little” the coronavirus. The United States Centers for Disease Control came to the same conclusion, which in a report last week said there is strong evidence that reopening schools can be done safely even if teachers are not vaccinated. While this is important, it is not an exclusive requirement, they assured.

Rejection of the College of Teachers

However, the College of Teachers maintained that, in its opinion, the conditions for returning to face-to-face classes have not yet been met..

“We call on private supporters, also the mayors of the country, to effectively protect the life and health of their communities, ”said the head of the entity, Carlos Díaz.

On the other hand, the Government spokesperson, Álvaro Bellolio, who criticized the position: “What we want is to ask the College of Professors to help us resume classes, because if they continue to raise obstacles or simply criticize the government, it is not understood “, did he declare.

Bellolio added that those who have suffered the most from the pandemic “are precisely vulnerable children” and that for this reason, it is urgent to return to school. “This is where we don’t want the pandemic to continue to increase inequality,” he said.

With an average of more than 180,000 vaccinated per day, the South American country maintains a favorable pace to reach the target of 5 million vaccinated by the end of March and the final goal of closing the first quarter of the year with 15 million people vaccinated against the coronavirus, out of a total of 18 million inhabitants.

The vaccination plan has so far succeeded in giving two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech substance to some 50,000 people, most of them health workers who started to be vaccinated on December 24, when the first vaccines arrived. in the country. The campaign, which began on February 3, comes after China received nearly four million doses of CoronaVac vaccine from the Sinovac laboratory.

The flu shot will also start

The start of the flu vaccination process is scheduled for March. This will require even more of the country’s health infrastructure, as the two inoculation processes must be carried out in parallel.

during influenza vaccination reached an estimated 7 million people in Chile last year, a figure dubbed a “record” by the Ministry of Health.

Some mayors have expressed their doubts about how the processes should be developed. Florida Chief Executive Rodolfo Carter said “so far we haven’t received any guidelines, and it’s critical to be clear about them, as the health deployment is going to be gigantic. “.

The mayor of Santiago, Felipe Alessandri, assured that the start of this process should begin “in the middle of next month”, and that once the directives of the Ministry of Health have been received, “we can proceed with the vaccination. in our Cesfam in parallel (Family Health Centers) and vaccinations, but separating the population ”.

KEEP READING

Chile estimates that by February 25 it will have vaccinated 4 million people against the coronavirus