no distancing for vaccinated pupils

In class with books on the bench and the green pass in the backpack. The possibility of avoiding distancing in the classrooms is evaluated school whether vaccination coverage will be adequate. There are only two months to go, in some regions even less, for the Italian students to return to class. Provided they can do it. In fact, the risk is that they will find themselves online once again for the third consecutive year. With the single-seat desks that can only be glimpsed from the computer screen, while listening to the teacher’s lesson remotely. This is not what the premier wants Draghi and, as reiterated several times, it is certainly not the goal of the education minister Bianchi who wants to see all the students in class 100%.

But it will not be easy, the difficulties of last year are always the same. Once again the problem concerns the high school kids who have spent the last year of school between presence, little, and distance, too much. Respect for the one meter spacing, in fact, in recent months has meant that shifts in the classroom were necessary. And now it could also be confirmed for next September, as anticipated by the Scientific Technical Committee. The only possible solution, for experts, lies in vaccines. Minister Bianchi invited everyone to undergo the vaccination, both teachers and students. Because the only real solution remains that. But the road is all uphill: 15% of school staff remain no-vax which, obviously, if they have not been vaccinated so far it means that they have no intention of doing so. The percentages obviously rise and fall between region and region, the situation is not the same throughout Italy. As far as students are concerned, the campaign is still far behind its times, considering that they are mostly minors, given that in a school superior only the fifth year boys are of age, it will be necessary to convince the parents.

But if the ministry calls for vaccinations, it means that the green pass could also work to open the schools: the technical-scientific committee was consulted by the ministry of education precisely on this aspect and in some days it will have to be expressed. Compared to a year ago, it being understood that there will be no additional spaces to put the distancing into practice, the vaccine factor could affect the anti-covid rules. And then among the possible scenarios there is the identification of a vaccination coverage threshold beyond which the distancing is no longer needed. It will be a question of evaluating region by region, therefore not on a national basis because the territorial realities are very different, and deciding that schools can be 100% open. For example: if the safety threshold is indicated at 70% and in Lazio it is reached, there the schools will open without distancing. Maybe with the mask but without imposing shifts in presence and at a distance.

The calculation must be made on a territorial average and not for each school or single class because the vaccination data are part of the protection of privacy. For this reason, the pressure on the vaccination obligation is growing, among teachers, who could risk being suspended from the service if they refused to be vaccinated: exactly as happened among the health professionals. It must be said, however, that the Italian school cannot afford to suspend 15% of the staff because it would not know how to replace the absent. Or, in any case, it would create a huge problem to find the alternate teachers and janitors to bring to class.

It would be necessary to play early to arrive on 1 September without last-minute defections. Therefore, the work of convincing the vaccine, implemented with the help of family doctors, could also be useful, also to alleviate organizational problems. Also because the next summer weeks promise to be hot, precisely from the organizational point of view: while waiting for the Technical Scientific Committee to express itself on the distancing between the desks with vaccination coverage, the schools deal with the spaces.

And the accounts, like a year ago, do not add up. Local authorities, i.e. municipalities and metropolitan cities, do not make new classrooms available. Inexplicably, from the old, unused public buildings, there are no new spaces to be assigned to students. As indeed they did not go out a year ago with the then minister Azzolina.