Teachers await Covid vaccines

Teachers await Covid vaccines

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She scrambled in the spring to set up virtual lessons for her fifth-grade language art students. By the fall, she was excited about returning to the classroom, but just on her second day back, she became so concerned about the conditions at her Houston school that she, along with other teachers, participated in an illness.

Now she wants the vaccine against Covid-19 to be prioritized for her and all other teachers to keep them safe at their schools.

“I’m all for putting teachers on a higher list because we are so many,” she told CNN.

President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $ 160 billion plan to run a national vaccination program, expand testing and mobilize a public-service program, among other things. He also asked for $ 50 billion to extend the testing of Covid-19, some of which is intended to achieve its goal of reopening schools safely.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he would have one of his main goals is to get children back into school and stay there when he becomes the medical adviser to the incoming government.

“The idea of ​​vaccinating teachers is very important in the priority, as well as in supervising the schools so that you can get a good feel for the penetration of infection,” he said last month.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention place teachers in the second tier of vaccine recipients and recommend that they be vaccinated along with other essential workers such as grocery store staff and police officers, as soon as healthcare professionals and residents of long-term care institutions are protected.

But it is up to individual states to make their own priorities, so while some like California follow CDC guidance, it is not mandatory.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis decided to open up vaccines to anyone over the age of 65, causing an overwhelming demand.
In Texas, where Gill teaches, Gov. Greg Abbott said in December he wanted teachers “near the front of the line.” But CNTR subsidiary, KTRK, reported last week that teachers are still waiting while Houston firefighters and police officers get their shots fired.

Alarm at the death of teachers

Evidence suggests that schools, especially primary schools, are not the spreaders who feared much. Cities that have seen increased positivity rates from coronavirus tests like Miami have managed to keep schools open without having an increase in cases among students and faculty.
Naseeb Gill teaches the children who come to her classroom, as well as those who stay at home.

But teachers are infected and some are dead.

Zelene Blancas, a healthy 35-year-old first-grade teacher in El Paso, Texas, spent months in the hospital before dying from Covid-19 complications.
Philamena Belone, 44, taught third-grade students in an oxygen mask after she was first admitted to hospital for treatment with coronavirus, but had to return when she could not breathe on her own. She was also previously healthy and died in December in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Stories like these shocked and frightened teachers. Gill told CNN last year she felt she was being asked to choose between her students and her health.

“I walk into a room where I don’t really know what I’m inhaling,” she said. “A lot of our schools really have, they’s very old and … their AC units are very, very old.”

Gill says she knows people who are leaving the profession. She is stressed, but she does her best to let it go and process the situation until she can be vaccinated and feel safer.

For now, however, she uses the same protection techniques used by medical personnel in the foreground.

“Before I go to my boyfriend’s house, I will put on my clothes and make sure I go take a shower and stuff, because I feel like I will bring something to the people I care about,” she said.

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