COVID-19 vaccine ‘may join list of required school immunisations’

Even as the Government continues to back away from mandatory vaccines, the Minister of Education acknowledged Wednesday that the COVID-19 vaccine will eventually join the list of immunizations children require to enter school.

Santia Bradshaw made the revelation in a virtual meeting on “online school and the future of education” which catered to students in the Reception, Infants A and Infants B age groups and their parents.

She said: “Our regulations already provide that children cannot enter schools unless they are vaccinated, and once the COVID-19 vaccine becomes available for children under the age of 12, we will be adding that to the list as well. The same exemptions we presently allow for religious and medical purposes will still apply, however.”

The makers of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which was available to secondary school students here shortly after it received approval by food and drug authorities in the United States, have already sought further approval for it to be administered to children between ages five and 12.

Looking ahead to the possible opening of high schools to in-person classes, the education minister said: “We wanted 70 per cent of all staff, including teachers and ancillary workers, vaccinated along with students between the ages of 12 and 18, but the Ministry of Health and Wellness has not got back to us yet on what those numbers look like as yet. We want to have an idea, school by school, on whether we have reached that target, but to our knowledge, the private schools have worked on it and they are pretty much ready to go.”

Bradshaw maintained that all  schools will remain closed for now in the midst of the pandemic’s worst wave here so far, fuelled primarily by the Delta variant of the virus.

“We continue to be guided by the experts at the Ministry of Health and Wellness,” she told the parents. “The Delta variant is highly transmissible and there are others like that, and while the children do prefer the face to face interaction we don’t want to put them at risk.”

When asked whether children would be subjected to testing for the virus in schools, Chief Education Officer, Ramona Archer-Bradshaw, said: “The Ministry of Health has to get back to us on whether we can use the saliva test in the schools, and we have considered asking student nurses at the Barbados Community College to assist with that. In terms of how often they will get tested, we previously spoke of random testing, as well as testing them once a week, but we are still discussing this with the health ministry.”

In response to a suggestion from a parent that plexiglass barriers, similar to those used by supermarket cashiers, could be used to surround the children’s desks in classrooms, Minister Bradshaw said: “We have not explored this option yet and it may be costly, and masks have been proved to be the most effective barrier.”

“Children are social beings, and once they are together they will always be moving around interacting with one another,” said Idamay Denny, the director of education reform in the ministry. “Not only that, the barriers may create problems in terms of ensuring proper ventilation within the classroom and it will be yet another surface that has to be kept clean.” 
(DH)