President Nicolás Maduro has announced that, starting from October, Venezuela’s children, from 3 to 18 years old, will be vaccinated, so that the new school year can be started with face-to-face classes.
The president made the announcement during a meeting with candidates of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) for the November 21 elections. This plan of vaccinating children is part of Venezuela’s effort to vaccinate 70% of the population before the end of 2021.
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Children, who have until now been the most resistant to the virus, are now being incorporated into the national vaccination scheme so as to guarantee total immunity for families and for the staff of educational centers that are scheduled to open their doors this October.
Back in July, President Maduro had already declared that “we must start preparing students classroom by classroom, section by section, high school by high school, university by university. With great firmness and steadfastness we will guarantee biosafety measures: physical distancing, protection, classes in open spaces.”
With this announcement of vaccinating the child population, Venezuela joins the 13 Latin American countries that have effectively begun to vaccinate minors between the ages of 12 and 17: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
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Back to school
The Venezuelan Ministry of Education is working to recover teachers’ salaries; while the president has approved resources for biosafety measures that will be applied in each school, as part of starting the school year in which over 8 million elementary and high school students would return to face-to-face classes.
A COVID-19 plan for the 2021-2022 academic year has already been devised. The plan consists in the provision of protective equipment and infrastructure safety measures, as part of the A Drop of Love for My School program, which, in its first phase, will address the safety issues of around 500 elementary schools and high schools throughout the country.
Featured image: Children aged 3 to 18 will soon begin to receive COVID-19 vaccines in Venezuela, as has already started in 13 other Latin American countries. Photo: Ministry of Education of Ecuador
(RedRadioVE) by Fransay Riera
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/GMS/SC
