Bangkok schools all set for on-site education from next Tuesday
With the upcoming onsite opening on May 17 for the first semester of the new academic year, 437 schools in Bangkok have been instructed to put Covid-19 prevention measures in place.
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) deputy permanent secretary Chawin Sirinak said on Thursday that schools that open next week must have all students aged 12-17 vaccinated against Covid-19 with at least three doses.
BMA has also urged parents of children aged 5-11 years to vaccinate their kids at vaccination units that the city has established at selected schools to give FDA-approved Pfizer jabs on a voluntary basis. The city aims to achieve at least 60 per cent vaccination rate in children aged 5-11 by the end of May.
“Vaccine is necessary for keeping children safe from Covid-19, in order to help reduce the chances of severe symptoms and fatalities,” Chawin pointed out. “Public health officials have been told to educate parents that the benefits of vaccine outweigh the side-effects, so that people would bring their children to get the jabs.”
Chawin added that the American Academy of Paediatrics had recently published a paper called “School Closure Versus Targeted Control Measures for SARS-CoV-2 Infection”, which studied infection rate trends in children in grades 1–10 in seven boroughs of Oslo, Norway, between February 15 and April 18, 2021.
“The findings indicated that school closure was not more effective than targeted infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in open schools in reducing student infection rates,” he pointed out. “Therefore, keeping schools open with appropriate IPC measures should be preferred over school closures, considering the negative consequences closures have on students. In the long term, Covid-19 measures in children should focus on evidence-based medicine to ensure that children have sound physical and mental health.”
