According to the CDC, teachers should be next in line to receive the covid 19 vaccines as this will help the schools to reopen quickly in a safe manner.
Many experts have lost hopes that the vaccines will be available in time for education institutes to reopen this year in a normal way.
CDC Says Teachers Should Get Vaccines To Reopen Schools
The vaccine rollout has been very slow due to various reasons. As of now, only about 4 million Americans have received the vaccines since the last few weeks.
Even though the CDC and federal governments issue guidelines with regards to the mass vaccination program, the states have the final authority in this regard.
In Ohio, the authorities are giving priority to school teachers and staff to receive the covid vaccines in the next phase of vaccination.
Currently, frontline health care workers are receiving vaccines across the country in the first phase of the vaccination program.
The Ohio administration wants to get the students back to normal classes by March 1. As of now, more than 70% of the students in Ohio are studying from home or having a combination of regular classes and remote learning.
The government wants to improve this by March and get back the students to regular classes by this time.
According to experts, the authorities plan to start the vaccination program for teachers by late January or early February as soon as the required doses are available in their states.
The authorities feel that when teachers are protected, it becomes easy for the schools to reopen for normal classes.
Many teachers have also expressed their willingness to get back to in-person classes once they receive the vaccine.
Fauci said that the vaccination program is likely to pick up pace in January. As of now, the vaccine rollout is slower than expected and many people have criticized the efforts of the federal authorities in this regard.
However, there are many hurdles with regard to the vaccine distribution process and a lot of procedures during the vaccine administration process.
Considering all these factors, it makes sense to wait for some more time before judging the efficiency of the mass vaccination program.
It is good to know that more than 1.5 million people have received the vaccine across the country in the last three days.
This is a good pace considering the fact that it took more than two weeks to reach the first 2 million vaccinations. Going by these numbers, the authorities are confident that things can move at a good speed in January.
Fauci also said that once more vaccines are available in the market, things will get a further boost. He added that everyone who wants to get vaccinated will have the doses available by spring.
Even though this is an ambitious target, experts feel that this can be easily achieved as three more companies are in the pipeline to receive emergency use authorization by the FDA.
Several experts also argue that vaccinating the teachers should not be a criterion for reopening the schools as they do not consider the schools as primary sources of transmission.
In this regard, they want to reopen the schools at the earliest without waiting for teachers to receive the vaccine.
However, several teachers are over the age of 50 and they usually come in the high risk category.
Considering this situation, it makes sense to vaccinate them as they will be in close proximity to hundreds of children in the schools.
In this way, the school administration can run the in-person classes effectively without any interruption in the future. The next phase of vaccination is likely to begin in February across the country.