Secondary schools will reopen after students are fully vaccinated – Education Ministry

The Education Ministry has reiterated that the re-opening of secondary schools for face-to-face teaching will be based on the national vaccination programme for adolescents across Guyana.
It said in a statement that the advice received from the Health Ministry it is better to allow students to be vaccinated and be fully inoculated before returning to the school’s physical environment.
For an adolescent to be deemed fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine they must receive two doses 21 -28 days apart with an additional seven to 14 days after the second dose to be fully protected. This would mean that the different secondary schools will return to face-to-face instruction on different dates. An example of this would be students of Queen’s College, St Rose’s High School and the Bishops’ High School were vaccinated on September 1, 2021. The students there were given September 28th as the date their second dose will be administered. Therefore, these schools will be reopened within seven to 14 days after the second dose is administered.
According to the Education Ministry, each secondary school will be informed of their respective reopening dates. As it relates to the other levels, the plans that were previously announced stand without variation.
The school term starts on Monday, September 6, 2021. Where schools are not reopening for face-to-face instruction, they will be engaged online or otherwise. Parents are encouraged to visit the Ministry of Education’s website to see the reopening plan for the respective schools.
The ministry is encouraging as many parents as possible to consent for their children aged 12 to 17 to receive the vaccine which will serve to protect them from the effects of COVID-19. It is also imploring with parents themselves and teachers who have not yet been vaccinated to get immunised in order to protect each other.
Vaccine drive-thru
The Health Ministry on Saturday organised another drive-thru activity at the National Stadium, Providence, East Bank Demerara, in which scores of persons turned up to get their shots.
This time around, the event was opened for the adolescent age group, in keeping with Government’s mandate to enable safe reopening of schools. Meanwhile, adults also showed up to get their first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Currently, the adolescent vaccination campaign, using the Pfizer jab, is being rolled out across Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) and Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo).
Senior Nurse Coordinator at the Ministry, Carol Persaud-Douglas told this publication, “This is to round up all of the adolescents within the Region Four catchment area to be immunized before the reopening of school. We are doing adults who are interested in first and second doses…This morning, it was crowded. We had a very good response.”
These efforts will continue in order to take the country closer to herd immunity. As it is, over 318,000 persons have been immunized in Guyana and more than 166,000 have been completely vaccinated.