By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has announced that vaccinations for schooling staff will commence next week.
Addressing the media in Pretoria on the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) Covid-19 response, Motshekga said vaccinations will start on Wednesday 23 June until 8 July – a day before schools close to mark the end of the second school term.
Motshekga said vaccinations would be “voluntary but highly recommended”, and basic education department deputy director-general Granville Whittle said teachers with comorbidities who declined to be vaccinated would not be penalised.
However, if they were still working from home they would not be allowed to continue doing so, and would be expected to return to the classroom.
“No one will be forced to do it, teachers with comorbidities are requested to vaccinate in order to be protected,” Motshekga said.
The government aims to vaccinate 582,000 teachers and teaching staff in all schools.
She said that the education sector has suffered severely in terms of learning and teaching, because of the virus outbreak.
In terms of the target population, the department said that all adults will be vaccinated in both public and private education sectors.
This will include teachers, admin staff, volunteer food handlers, and cleaners. All officials in the sector will also be vaccinated.
No age restrictions are in place for the vaccination program, Motshekga said.
Motshekga also said schools will remain open despite calls for schools to be closed due to the third wave of the pandemic. She said a majority of school governing bodies and teacher unions agreed with the DBE that schools should not be closed.
“We believe that schools must remain open and in saying so we are not insensitive to the concerns raised about the rising infections, “Motshekga said.
Primary school children are set to return to school on 28 July, which is the first day of the third school term.
The minister said about 100 schools across the country have been disrupted due to outbreaks of Covid-19 infections. She said her department will close schools on a case-by-case basis.
A total of 51,301 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, with 10,510 new cases, which represents a 20.5% positivity rate.
The total number of laboratory-confirmed cases now stands at 1,796,589. A further 118 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 58,441.