For several weeks now, the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities has been making efforts to understand, with the tutelage and the Task-Force for Vaccination, the reasons for the exclusion of Higher Education professionals from the priority given to teachers and non-teachers of the remaining education levels in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
The Direção-Geral de Saúde’s own norm on the vaccination process (Norm 002/2021, of April 21) mentions “Professionals of education and teaching establishments and social responses to support children” as one of the priority groups for vaccination. to preserve the resilience of the State.
By definition, this group should include higher education teachers and non-teachers who, in addition to being an integral part of the national education system, are involved in the State’s resilience effort to the same extent as professionals in Basic Education and of Secondary Education.
On the other hand, there is no scientific reason to justify the option of prioritizing the vaccination of professionals from only a few levels of education. The risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is similar in any classroom or any educational establishment, knowing that it was precisely at the Higher Education level that the first cases of COVID-19 in a school context were detected in Portugal.
More importantly, with the current definition of “risk contact” by the DGS, a single professional who tests positive may force a large number of students to be prophylactically isolated or even close the educational establishment, thus putting jeopardizing the effort made by the entire academic community to resume face-to-face teaching activities.
For these reasons, the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities continues to mobilize efforts to sensitize the technical and political leaders of the national vaccination campaign to the need to correct this inexplicable discrimination of higher education teachers and non-teachers in relation to other teaching professionals. from the country.
The Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities
April 23, 2021