JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Ministry allocates 4,000 vaccines for educators

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1390 days ago
20210528
Vehicles leave the  UTT Campus at Munroe Road, Chaguanas, yesterday, where teachers were vaccinated for COVID-19.

Vehicles leave the UTT Campus at Munroe Road, Chaguanas, yesterday, where teachers were vaccinated for COVID-19.

SHASTRI BOODAN

One week af­ter Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly as­sured that teach­ers will be among the pri­or­i­ty groups to re­ceive COVID-19 vac­cines dur­ing this phase, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700 ed­u­ca­tors have been short-list­ed to be im­mu­nised.

The group was sched­uled to be­gin re­ceiv­ing in­jec­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) Cam­pus, Munroe Road, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day.

Un­able to say just how many peo­ple would have re­ceived the vac­cine, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been al­lo­cat­ed 4,000 vac­cines for those ed­u­ca­tors who would be in­volved in ex­ams.”

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, as she an­nounced the three-week post­pone­ment of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am from June 10 to Ju­ly 1, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the con­tin­ued in­crease in new dai­ly in­fec­tions had led to this de­ci­sion.

She said the post­pone­ment was “nec­es­sary due to the tra­jec­to­ry of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the en­su­ing chal­lenges posed by the health reg­u­la­tions at this time.”

Prin­ci­pals and teach­ers, along with ad­min­is­tra­tive per­son­nel from all schools, had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed con­cerns about hav­ing to in­vig­i­late the SEA ex­am with­out hav­ing been vac­ci­nat­ed­—a move TTUTA had ad­vised their mem­bers against.

How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly last week promised the vac­ci­na­tion of ed­u­ca­tors would be a pri­or­i­ty fo­cus for the Min­istry of Health.

She said, “Teach­ers who are and will be in clos­est or re­peat­ed phys­i­cal con­tact with stu­dents have been tar­get­ed as a pri­or­i­ty group, and the MoH will ac­com­mo­date this sub-set of teach­ers for pri­or­i­ty vac­ci­na­tion.”

Video from just out­side the main gate of the UTT Ch­agua­nas Cam­pus yes­ter­day, con­firmed a steady flow of ve­hi­cles ex­it­ing the com­pound as peo­ple pre­sent­ed them­selves to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

Tekah-De Fre­itas was un­able to say how many ed­u­ca­tors have con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus and/or would have died as a re­sult since the first case was de­tect­ed in T&T on March 12, 2020.

She was un­will­ing to of­fer up any fig­ures, as she said TTUTA has to be very care­ful in terms of such a pro­nounce­ment, as this could on­ly be done through con­fir­ma­tion by rel­a­tives or health of­fi­cials.

Ad­mit­ting she was aware of three peo­ple con­tract­ing the virus, she said teach­ers con­tin­ued to iso­late at home as they con­duct on­line school­ing, and that trans­mis­sion had come via fam­i­ly mem­bers who are mov­ing around and which had led to them be­ing ex­posed.

The TTUTA head urged the pop­u­la­tion to ad­here to pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions to wear masks, sani­tise and so­cial dis­tance when they go out.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored