Minister of Education, Fayval Williams, has announced that to date, 99,887 students have gotten at least one dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, out of a population of around 240,000.
Disclosing this during the sitting of the House of Representatives on November 9, the Minister noted that the Education Ministry is still guided by the national average vaccination threshold of 65 percent, which means, as soon as the number of students who are fully vaccinated in the nation’s schools gets to 65 percent, those students can begin to return to face-to-face classes.
“We will still have the other modalities online, audio/visual, learning kit available for those students whose parents have chosen to not let their children take the vaccination,” she added.
Cabinet, on November 8, approved the administration of the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine for students in secondary schools. Minister Williams stated that the Deputy Chief Education Officer in charge of school operations is working with schools to help ramp up so that children aged 12 to 18 may get vaccinated and return to school as soon as feasible.
“We will have as many vaccination blitzes as we can in our schools with our school nurses, making it convenient for our students to get access to the vaccines. I implore our school leaders, our teachers, our administrators, all the staff at our schools if you have not already done so, to get vaccinated so that we can create ‘resilient corridors’ in our schools,” she urged.
The Education Minister stated it is evident how the resilient corridors have worked well in the tourism sector, keeping people safe, and encouraged Jamaicans to get vaccinated, to get back to life.
