Teachers and students will be affected by a mandatory vaccination policy announced for all government workers and statutory bodies beginning October 1, 2021.
All eligible students, 12 years and upwards are required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while all primary and secondary school teachers must be fully vaccinated before returning to face-to-face classes.
They too must adhere to the new policy or have their salary or wages withdrawn for the period that they may not comply.
Face-to-face classes began this Monday. It is unclear at this point whether unvaccinated teachers will be allowed to host online classes.
Cabinet spokesman, Melford Nicholas says that decision will be left up to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health.
Schools, he said, will have to make an application to these Ministries which will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The Cabinet had initially instituted a policy of either vaccination or mandatory testing every 14 days, however it said today that the withdrawal of the testing option, previously announced, I”s determined by both the number of testing kits available and the number of personnel available to undertake the tests of the several hundred unvaccinated government-paid workers”.
“The vaccination centers, on the other hand, can provide the requisite number of jabs of the unvaccinated employees by September 30, 2021”, it noted.