Vaccination of children from 5 to 11 years old in schools, who have announced three autonomies and are considering making another two, has opened a debate in the educational community, part of whose representatives fear that immunizing the kids in school will stigmatize those who do not receive the serum for a decision that they will not make, but His parents.
The Valencian Community, Extremadura and La Rioja have confirmed that they will vaccinate children in educational centers, while Castilla-La Mancha and the Canary Islands are studying doing so. Other territories, such as Aragon or Madrid, have finally ruled it out, although more due to organizational difficulties, such as the beginning of the Christmas holidays, than ethical or coexistence, which are those pointed out by Vicent Mañes, president of the Federation of Directors’ Associations from Public Centers for Infant and Primary Education, Fedeip: “In addition to logistical issues, vaccinating at school poses above all a problem to guarantee confidentiality, because it will be very difficult to avoid knowing who is vaccinated and who is not.”
Mañes, director of a school in Cata-roja, Valencia, considers that making an exception to the general rule of immunizing children in health facilities and vaccination centers is a way of “conditioning” parents. To pressure them to opt for immunization. “I am in favor of vaccinating children, if I had children of that age I would do it, but I understand that there may be people who do not, and I believe that doing so may contravene the right of families who do not want to vaccinate them, and may affect minors ”.
The measure also raises doubts for Francisco García, Secretary of Education for Comisiones Obreras, the majority union among teachers. “The centers will have to collect the authorizations of the parents, and these will already show before the center that there are children who are vaccinated and children who are not vaccinated. The right to privacy will be violated and difficulties of coexistence may be generated a posteriori, and rejection of some boys or girls ”. Mari Carmen Morillas, vice president of Ceapa, the largest federation of public schools, asks: “Why do you have to get the covid vaccine in schools? Why are they not vaccinated in health facilities like everyone else? Preferably in health centers, which are close to their homes, enabling schedules for this. ” Criticism aside, Mañes, García and Morillas add that what the health authorities decide must be respected.
“What the teaching of the past tells us”, Affirms to justify the decision José María Vergeles, second vice president and counselor of Health and Social Services of the Junta de Extremadura,“ is that if you want to vaccinate you have to go where the children are ”. This was done with great success, Vergeles recalls, with the 1997 meningitis C vaccination campaign in the autonomous community.
The Board’s decision has the support of the main federation of families in Extremadura, Freampa, whose president, Eva Rodríguez, affirms that no possible confidentiality problems have been raised. “We have not had any complaints from parents in this regard and we expect almost 100% vaccination. What we want is for them to be vaccinated as soon as possible, because it is being seen that children are a contagious fringe. The closings of classrooms that are taking place correspond to those courses, because the older ones are already vaccinated ”. The measure, Rodríguez continues, favors “family and work reconciliation” by not requiring parents to accompany them, and Freampa has already requested it without success for the adolescent vaccination campaign. The Extremaduran executive has advanced that, in principle, it is not foreseen that parents can accompany minors in the center to be vaccinated to avoid “crowds”, an issue that also worries teachers, such as Vicente Mañes, and some parents.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health of the Valencian Generalitat argues that, since the regulations establish that vaccinated students will not have to comply with quarantine in the event that there is a positive in their bubble group, the debate on the stigma that vaccination can cause in educational centers does not make much sense, because They vaccinate where they are vaccinated, it will end up knowing who has been immunized and who has not.
The experience of what is happening in high schools, however, where vaccinated students have been exempt from quarantines for months, does not point in that sense. The systems are different depending on the autonomous community, but broadly they agree that schools have very little or no official information about who is vaccinated, cannot require immunization certificates from students, and they are not directly in charge of ordering student quarantines, but it does public health.
In communities like the Valencian one, the educational centers act as intermediaries: they receive the information from the health authorities and communicate it to the students who must be confined. In others, such as Navarra, the Department of Health notifies students directly without informing the center (so it is possible that a student ignores the quarantine and continues attending class, says a teacher). The reason why a high school student considered close contact stops attending class is not officially known at the center: it may be because he is not vaccinated, but also because he himself has tested positive (despite having received the serum) when analyzing the contacts of the index case.
Keeping the unknown will be much more difficult if he is vaccinated at school, believes Isabel, mother of a child in a public school in Valencia. “Children who do not get vaccinated are going to be singled out for teachers and also for their classmates. Children know what covid is, they have a certain fear and curiosity. Having a partner who does not get in line to be vaccinated will attract their attention, and when they finish they will talk about how it was, if the puncture hurt them… ”, affirms the woman, who, despite not appearing to be good about the system, authorize the immunization of your child at school. Rubén Pacheco, president of the Valencian Federation of Families, is also concerned about how confidentiality will be guaranteed. A problem that the spokesperson for the Extremadura Health Ministry admits: “It will act with the utmost discretion and ensuring the privacy of all. However, with the ages we start with, it will not be possible to control that the children speak and ask about the subject among themselves ”.
The Valencian Government adds an argument in favor of the confidentiality of the process, and that is that there may be several reasons why a student does not get vaccinated: “that the covid has passed less than four weeks ago, that they are allergic to any component of the vaccine and is contraindicated to be vaccinated or to be in quarantine ”, so the fact that he does not receive the serum does not necessarily imply that his family rejects the immunization and in no case will the centers be detailed to the reasons why a student is not vaccine.
A smaller group than adolescents
The pediatrician and epidemiologist Quique Bassat recalls that other vaccines, like papilloma (which is usually used at 12 years of age), they are already administered in educational centers in some communities, and he thinks that it should not be “More importance to the covid vaccine than to others that we already put”. But he considers that from a logistical point of view it is easier to integrate the vaccination of children into the same system that has worked with the rest of the population.
Using vaccination at school to pressure families “would be wrong and it would be ugly,” says Bassat, who does not believe that this is the reason why some communities are going to do it. “I see no reason for it. Adolescents, who were a much more concerned group, responded very well. With children it is less important than with adolescents to achieve very high coverage. And they are, precisely, the group in which the family wishes of whether or not they want to be vaccinated should be more respected ”, because they develop, in the vast majority of cases and at least with the well-studied variants so far , a mild version of the disease.
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