The Ministry of Education (MoE) has started preparations to make the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines for teachers easier when the Health Ministry authorises their immunisation.
While the Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony is yet to announce when teachers will be vaccinated, he recently said that the teachers are among the next batch of frontline workers. Anthony during a COVID-19 update last week, said “As we get more vaccines, teachers are certainly one of the priority groups that we want to look at.”
Minister of Education Priya Manickchand during an interview with Stabroek News yesterday said her ministry has started preparations to make access to the vaccine for teachers easier. “Once the Health Ministry gives the clearance that they have vaccines and that teachers are going to be in the category for receiving it, we will be welcoming that. We have begun to put things in place to make it easy for the Ministry of Health officials to identify teachers without having them spend enormous time on screening of persons to be able to do that. We will be helping organise our teachers to get to locations, vaccination sites efficiently and effectively,” the minister said.
“We don’t want to be scrambling. Vaccines are here and now we are issuing letters, so everybody has their letters in their hands now,” Manickchand said as she added that the ministry is prepared to go very far to make things easier for the teachers to receive the vaccines.
Additionally, Manickchand said that the ministry is also happy to have the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) onboard. On March 12, the MoE and the GTU in a joint statement said that the two bodies “stand committed to their duty to ensure our teachers are safe, particularly at this time as we are all battling this pandemic together” and had announced the issuance of the letters for teachers to be easily identified. It also stated that while “it is not and will not be mandatory for teachers to be vaccinated, the MoE and GTU will embark on a sensitisation campaign to better inform teachers of the facts surrounding vaccination and the importance and benefits of being vaccinated”. It added that the choice will be left entirely to the individuals.
The ongoing national immunisation programme is only intended for health workers in the public and private sectors and persons age 60 and over in 2021. The Health Ministry has said it will advise when the next priority group will be added to the list.
