Around 100 teachers in schools under the General Education Department in Ernakulam are yet to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
They figure among the estimated 5,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in the State that remain unvaccinated. The guidelines for school reopening stipulated that teachers should get their COVID-19 shots. The government had toughened its stand against staff that have not received the doses amidst discussions about resuming full-fledged offline classes. The number of unvaccinated teachers was 150 in the district at the time of reopening of schools on November 1. The total number of teachers under the department in the district is around 13,000. According to the Education Department in Ernakulam, only one among the nearly 100 teachers had stated “not interested” as the reason for not taking the vaccine. Most of them had stated allergy as the reason for not taking the two doses. A section of the teachers said that they were tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after receiving the first dose and hence could not take the second dose within the stipulated period. They need at least three months to receive the second dose as per the guidelines prescribed by the Department of Health.
The Education Department had asked the teachers, who are yet to be vaccinated, not to attend the offline sessions. They were allowed to take online classes. A decision on the salary payment for teachers falling under this category has not yet been taken by the government.
On the steps being taken in the wake of the reports of the Omicron coronavirus variant, the authorities said that they were yet to receive any guidelines in the wake of the new variant being reported in several countries. “We are continuing with the bio-bubble model, where a class is divided into two or three such spaces”, they said. Only the students in a bio-bubble are permitted to interact with one another in the bubble. School managements have to ensure that the entire bio-bubble goes into quarantine after either a student or a teacher in the bubble tests positive for COVID-19, they said.
