Reactions to the new Covid measures: Back to square one timesofmalta.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timesofmalta.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Updated 11am, adds Secretariat for Catholic Education, Church Schools Association statement
Tension and anger are mounting among education staff who have not yet received vaccination appointments and their schools are demanding a clear timeline on the vaccine roll-out for their “forgotten” teachers.
De La Salle College, with nearly 300 staff members in its primary, secondary and Sixth Form sectors, including St Benild’s School, has not received any appointments yet, Stephen Cachia, director of Educational Mission, La Salle Malta, said.
“They cannot understand how vaccination appointments are now being given to government officials who work in offices and are able to telework while they seem to have been forgotten,” he remarked.
Teachers unions have taken different views on whether schooling should shift online, with the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) saying it is monitoring the situation on the basis of medical advice, and the Union of Professional Educators (UPE) saying the shift should take place immediately owing to the surge in the number of virus cases.
In a message on YouTube, the executive head of the UPE, Graham Sansone, said that the teachers union is alarmed by the increasing number of COVID-19 cases. He said that he is especially concerned about the new UK variant, which is causing more infections among children.
The government must act to address the latest record-breaking spike in new COVID-19 cases, the nurses union said on Tuesday, warning a lockdown could soon be the only solution. The government is taking things too lightly. Yes, a lockdown should be used as a last resort but the way things are heading, we re soon reaching that point, Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) head Paul Pace said.
The government has resisted calls for a lockdown, insisting this would be futile and that measures in place are enough to keep the situation under control.
Health Minister Chris Fearne also previously dismissed introducing a so-called circuit breaker - a short lockdown to help bring down numbers and stop the situation from spiraling out of control. Instead, he pointed to the vaccine roll out as the solution.
The Malta Union of Teachers has said it trusts health authorities’ decision on which vaccines to administer to teachers and will not question their plans