Health and Education announce that students of Baccalaureate and FP will be vaccinated at the end of August

Tuesday 16th July 2021 – PRESS RELEASE with Mike Smith

The regional secretary for Health, Ana Barceló, and the regional secretary for Education, Culture and Sports, Vicent Marzà, met to discuss vaccination and measures against the coronavirus in the education field with a view to the start of the next school year.

Barceló announced that “the vaccination of those under 18 and 17 years old – high school and vocational training students – will begin in the last week of August in all vaccination centres“, adding that her department is speeding up and moving ahead with the vaccination process. And it will be made more effective by the commitment made with the Ministry of Health in Madrid to increase the delivery of doses to the Comunidad Valenciana to compensate for vaccines to be administered to those from other regions and the deficiency caused by the distribution of vaccines based on age.

In addition, during the month of August, once the number of vaccine doses is known, the vaccination of students at ESO stage will be scheduled, aimed at the 12-16 age group.

In this sense, Marzà explained that “teams from the two departments have been summoned to a meeting that will take on August 6th, once more details are available on the delivery forecasts and available doses, closing the aspects related to the vaccination of Secondary Education students“.

The heads of Health and Education have come together to point out that the safety and hygiene guidelines are completely internalized in the education sector in the Comunidad Valenciana, which has proven to be an example to follow.

Marzà explained that “it has been a course in which educational centres have been shown to be the safest places for socialization and part of the solution to the pandemic” and thanked education and health workers for their enormous efforts.

It should be remembered that, for the next academic year, the budget for the safety and hygiene in educational centres has already been planned with some 39.4 million euros put aside by the Ministry of Education. In addition, thanks to the work carried out from centre to centre, the Valencian schools will have an extra 5,042 staff teachers to guarantee attention and educational quality.

During the 2020-2021 school year, of almost 47,000 groups of students in education centres across the Comunidad Valenciana, the majority were able to enjoy face-to-face teaching every week with hardly any incidents. The number of cases and outbreaks registered in the school environment has been reduced and the risk of transmission law, thanks to the coordinated work of the health and educational authorities, as well as the efforts of teachers, students and families.

In addition, the teaching staff as well as the rest of the personnel who work in the centres, such as monitors and canteen staff, cleaning teams, cooks, and administrative staff, have responded in a massive way to the vaccination process contemplated in the National Strategy against COVID-19 because they are essential professionals.

In fact, the majority of people in this group already completed the immunization course and there are appointment being organized for those who couldn’t receive the vaccine when they were originally summoned because they had recently recovered from the virus or were newly-arrived staff.