Chandigarh: Schools in Punjab may begin to roll in normal lanes, but around 30% of staff at government schools – teaching and non-teaching – have not received the first Covid-19 vaccine, leaving them and students vulnerable to infection.
All schools in the state have been reopened from August 2 after more than four months of gap and 40 students have been detected by the virus after rejoining the school.
Of the 126,540 staff, 89,562 had received at least one dose of a temporary vaccine 36,978 had not been affixed.
In the main part, more than 34% of staff are still out of vaccine coverage, the percentage is around 27% in the secondary part.
Tarn Taran has the highest percentage of unvaccinated staff.
As a record of the Ministry of Education, around 58% of staff in elementary school and more than 55% in the secondary part have not been immunized so far.
At Fatehgarh Sahib, the percentage of staff has not received the first dose is around 55% in primary and more than 35% in the secondary section.
Similarly, in the Ferozepur District, around 52% in primary and more than 35% in the secondary part have not been penetrated even once.
Other districts with low coverage including Sangrur, Moga, Ludhiana and Amritsar.
Punjab Education Secretary Crisis on Tuesday directed district education officers to contact their respective deputies and arrange special camps to vaccinate the remaining staff members.
For student safety, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh has directed that only teaching and non-teaching staff who are fully vaccinated, or those who have just recovered from Covid, will be allowed to teach physically in schools.
The State Health Department recently issued a strict supervision protocol and testing strategy for schools, according to which schools that reported weekly participants of more than 10% would not be allowed to bring Inperson learning.
In the case of a positive case confirmed detected, school management must ensure that all individuals in the class were quarantined and tested.
Allegations of cases detected using quick antigen testing will be confirmed by testing the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).
If one case of Covid-19 is confirmed, the school must suspend the class for 14 days and the school must be suspended for 14 days if two or more cases are detected.
If onetird from schools in the city or city is closed, all schools in the geography will be closed.
2,000 Covid cases in the second wave: State government must face criticism after a large number of students and teachers contracted by a virus when school reopened after the first wave of infection.
Between the first week of January and February-end, more than 2,000 students and the teacher were infected with a virus.