The Ministries of Education and Culture and Health have begun to work on the protocol to plan the vaccination campaign against covid in workers in educational centers.
This Wednesday the Occupational Health and Safety Committee of the Ministry of Education met, where the application of the strategy was addressed, according to the established order of population groups that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and those with the greatest risk of exposure and of transmission to other people, including the teachers and staff of Early Childhood Education and Special Education, including both teachers and others professionals who serve students (Group 6B) and teachers and staff of Primary and Secondary Education (Group 6C).
The first group (Infant and Special Education) includes all workers, both teachers and non-teachers, as well as external staff to the center that attends directly to infant students and open classrooms (this attention must be reflected in their regular center hours). Specifically, it incorporates Kindergarten teachers and open classrooms; university internship students or masters who do internships in kindergarten or special education; any other staff that teach directly or collaborate with the same in children’s classrooms or open classrooms (conversation aides or special education associations, among others); personnel from the Therapeutic Pedagogy (PT), Hearing and Language (AL) and compensatory education specialties; canteen staff and educational technical assistant (ATE), physical therapists, school nurses; and any other personnel whose work involves physical contact with the students, according to sources from the regional Executive.
The group of teachers and staff of Primary and Secondary Education includes the rest of the workers, both teachers and non-teachers, as well as personnel from outside the center who serve students. In this case, they are Primary Education teachers and university or master internship students, conversation assistants and any other personnel who provide direct teaching or collaborate with it in the classrooms; teachers of Secondary Education and FP; student body of university practices or master conversation assistants and any other personnel who provide direct teaching or collaborate with it in the classrooms; teachers of the rest of the courses; conversation assistants and any other personnel who provide direct teaching or collaborate with it in the classrooms; and cleaning staff, administration and services, ordinances, transportation and monitors who attend extracurricular activities, if applicable.
Needs estimation
The Ministry of Education and Culture will carry out a estimation of dose requirements in relation to the number of users and educational workers and, within these, those under 56 years of age.
For it, educational centers must update their census of workers in a computer application and manage the request for the necessary doses and worker authorizations, identifying those who request to be vaccinated.
The vaccine available for this group is the one manufactured by AstraZeneca and, according to the government’s forecast, it would begin to be administered in early March.
CCOO denounces that priority is not given to personnel especially sensitive to COVID
The union points out that the Vaccination Strategy against COVID19 in Spain establishes that the personnel who attend infant and special education students are in the 6B vaccination group and the personnel who attend primary and secondary students in the 6C. The personnel of these groups up to 55 years of age will be vaccinated with Astrazeneca and those aged 56 and over with RNA-type vaccines, such as Pfizer or Moderna, when they are available, after vaccinating the rest of the priority groups. This strategy does not prevent that, within groups 6B and 6C, priority is given to personnel especially sensitive to COVID-19. Nevertheless, the regional administration has not established any priority of this type.
CCOO denounces that the Ministry of Education will not give any priority in the order of vaccination to personnel especially sensitive to COVID-19. According to data from the Ministry itself, between teaching and non-teaching staff in schools, there are 2430 people recognized as personnel especially sensitive to COVID-19. The union considers that sensitive personnel should be prioritized in the order of vaccination who is in daily contact with the students and is exposed to a much higher risk in case of contagion.
CCOO Enseñanza also considers that vaccination planning, in 10 days, with three large vaccination centers in the Region, will cause serious distortions in educational attention to students. This plan assumes that around 2,500 teachers will have to be displaced per day, causing serious alterations in their educational centers. CCOO considers that a more appropriate strategy to the school reality of the Region would be to vaccinate in the work centers from the health centers.
CCOO too denounces the fact that those over 55 years of age, many of them recognized as especially sensitive personnel, have to wait for RNA vaccines to become available. This will de facto mean that the essential immunization of school personnel does not take place because, due to the aging of the teaching staff caused by educational cuts, a considerable percentage of teaching workers is within this age group you will have to wait to get vaccinated.
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