The vaccination of children from 5 to 11 years in schools, which have announced three autonomies and consider making two others, has opened a debate in the educational community, part of whose representatives they fear that immunizing the kids in the stigmatize school to whom those whoThey do not receive serum for a decision that they will not make, but their parents.
The Valencian Community, Extremadura and La Rioja have confirmed that they will vaccinate children in educational centers, while Castilla-La Mancha and the Canary Islands study doing so.Other territories, such as Aragon or Madrid, have finally ruled out, although more due to organizational difficulties, such as the beginning of Christmas holidays, ethics or coexistence, which are those that Vicent Mañes, president of the Federation of Associations of Managers points outOf public centers of early and primary education, Fedeip: "In addition to logistics issues, vaccinate at school poses above all a problem to guarantee confidentiality, because it will be very difficult to prevent you from knowing who is vaccinated and who does not".
Mañes, director of a school in Cata-Roja, Valencia, considers that making children an exception to the general norm of immunizing in sanitary and vaccination facilities is a way to “condition” parents.Of pressing them to be decant for immunization.“I am favorable to the vaccination of children, if I had children of that age, but I understand that there may be no people, and I think doing so can contravene the right of families who do not want to vaccinate them, and can affectThe minors ".
The measure also generates doubts to Francisco García, Secretary of Education of Workers' Commissions, the majority union among teachers.“The centers will have to collect the authorizations of the parents, and they will already show before the center that there are children who vaccinate and children who do not vaccinate.The right to intimacy will be violated and can be generated after coexistence, and rejection of some kids or kids ”.Mari Carmen Morillas, Vice President of Ceapa, the largest public school federation, asks: “Why does the Covid vaccine have to be put in educational centers?Why don't you get vaccinated in sanitary facilities like everyone?Preferably in health centers, which are close to their homes, enabling schedules ”.Criticism apart, Mañes, García and Morillas add that what the health authorities decide should be respected.
"What the teaching of the past tells us," says the decision José María Vergeles, second vice president and Minister of Health and Social Services of the Board of Extremadura, "is that if you want to vaccinate you have to go where the children are".This was done with great success, Vergeles recalls, with the Meningitis C vaccination campaign in 1997 in the Autonomous Community.
The decision of the Board has the support of the main federation of families of Extremadura, Freampa, whose president, Eva Rodríguez, states that possible confidentiality problems have not been raised.“We have not had any parents' complaint and we expect a virtually 100% vaccination.What we want is that they get vaccinated as soon as possible, because children are being seen.The classroom closures that are occurring correspond to these courses, because the older ones are already vaccinated ”.The measure, Rodríguez continues, favors "family and work conciliation", not requiring the parents to accompany them, and Freampa has already requested it without success for the adolescent vaccination campaign.The Extremadura executive has advanced that, in principle, it is not expected that parents can accompany minors in the center of being vaccinated to avoid “agglomerations”, an issue that also worries teachers, such as Vicente Mañes, and some parents.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana argues that, since the regulations establish that vaccinated students will not have to meet quarantine in the event that there is a positive in their bubble group, the debate on the stigma that can cause theVaccination in educational centers does not make much sense, because they are vaccinated where they are vaccinated, it will end up knowing who has immune and who does not.
The experience of what is happening in the institutes, however, where vaccinated students are exempt from meeting quarantines for months, does not point in that regard.The systems are different according to the Autonomous Community, but in broad strokes they agree that the educational centers have very little or no official information about who are vaccinated, they cannot demand immunization certificates from students and are not directly responsible for ordering thequarantines of the students, but does it public health.
In communities such as Valenciana, educational centers act as intermediaries: they receive information from the health authorities and communicate it to students who must confine.In others, such as Navarra, the Department of Health directly warns students without informing the center (so it is possible for a student to ignore the quarantine and continue to attend class, says a teacher).The reason why a high school student considered close contact stops attending class is not officially known in the center: it can be because he is not vaccinated, but also because he himself has given positive (despite having received the serum) when analyzingIndex case contacts.
Maintaining the unknown will be much more difficult if you vaccinate at school, believe Isabel, mother of a child in a public school in Valencia.“Children who do not get vaccinated are going to be indicated for teachers and also for their classmates.Children know what covid is, they have some fear and curiosity.Having a partner who does not put himself in the row to be vaccinated will get their attention, and when they end up talking about how it has been, if the puncture hurt… ”, says the woman, who, despite not seeming the system well, the systemwill authorize your child's immunization at school.Rubén Pacheco, president of the Valencian Family Federation, is also concerned about how confidentiality will be guaranteed.A problem admitted by the spokesman for the Ministry of Extremadura: “It will act with the maximum discretion and ensuring everyone's privacy.However, with the ages with the start it will not be possible to control that children talk and ask about the subject among them ”.
The Generalitat Valenciana adds an argument in favor of the confidentiality of the process, and there may be several reasons why a student does not vaccinate: “That the COVID has passed less than four weeks ago, that it is allergic to some component of thevaccine and have contraindicated to be vaccinated or that is in quarantine ”, so that the fact that he does not receive serum does not necessarily imply that his family rejects immunization and in no case will the centers be detailed to the reasons why a student does notvaccine.
A less important group than adolescents
El pediatra y epidemiólogo Quique Bassat recuerda que otras vacunas, como la del papiloma (que suele ponerse a los 12 años), ya se administran en centros educativos en algunas comunidades, y opina que no debería darse “más importancia a la vacuna del covid que a otras que ya ponemos”.But consider that from a logistics point of view it is easier to integrate the vaccination of children in the same system that has worked with the rest of the population.
Using vaccination at school to press families "would be bad and would be ugly," says Bassat, who does not believe that this is why some communities are going to do so."I don't see reason for it.The teenagers, who were a group that worried much more, responded very well.With children it is less important that with adolescents reach very high coverage.And they are precisely the group in which the family will of whether they want to be vaccinated, ”because they develop, in the vast majority of cases and at least with the variants well studied so far, a slight version of the disease.
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