An­na-Lisa Paul

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.