GDE ‘alarmed’ as over 9 000 teachers refuse vaccine
The Gauteng Department of Education has expressed what it described as 'gravely alarmed' at the knowledge that just under 10 000 teachers in the province had refused to get vaccinated.
The Gauteng Department of Education has expressed what it described as ‘gravely alarmed’ at the knowledge that just under 10 000 teachers in the province had refused to get vaccinated. In a statement released on Friday, the department said that 9 113 teachers had declined to get a jab of the J&J vaccine.
“We are very worried that nearly 10,000 of our personnel in the Gauteng education sector are, for one reason or the other, refusing to be vaccinated against this deadly virus which has wreaked havoc in our schools and communities by taking away our loved ones,” said Gauteng’s MEC for education, Panyaza Lesufi.
In the statement, the department said that while vaccination was voluntary, reluctance harmed the government’s effort to curb the spread of the virus in schools and could potentially disturb the academic year.
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A fortnight ago, the basic education department teamed up with the department of health in a massive mass vaccination of teachers and supporting staff in the education sector. As of July 2, the Gauteng department of education said that 53 154 education personnel had been vaccinated out of an overall of 124 934 across its 56 sector dedicated sites.
The department further urged that those who refused the vaccine to reconsider and get vaccinated.
Speaking CNN last Friday, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center Dr. William Schaffner warned that unvaccinated people could be ‘variant factories’.
“Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories. The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply. When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road,” said Schaffner.
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