Scott Morrison challenging the states to stick to reopening as outlined in Doherty report as Gladys Berejiklian promises return-to-school plan by week’s end. Follow updates live
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The NSW education minister, Sarah Mitchell, held meetings with the chief executives of the independent and Catholic schools sector on Monday to discuss how the higher school certificate can go ahead, face-to-face, in October.
The talks are understood to have covered getting information about vaccination rates of teachers in each sector, whether socially distanced exam rooms were possible, the number of vaccinated invigilators available to supervise exams and whether HSC students could be vaccinated in time.
The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, promised on Monday that she would make an announcement later this week about when schools would be returning, but said her announcement last week about the lockdown continuing until the end of September meant that schools would not be back in term three.
HSC written exams start on 12 October. The NSW government would face a mammoth logistic task to vaccinate the 77,000 students sitting their final exam this year.
The government prioritised an estimated 22,000 HSC students in the 12 government areas of concern for vaccination two weeks ago – but it is unclear how many have taken up the Pfizer doses which were administered at a special hub.
“We have also started the process of HSC students being vaccinated, so we will provide those plans now that we have some certainty as to what the supply of vaccines looks like in September, October,” Berejiklian said, hinting that there may be further mass vaccination drives.
Public school teachers are currently being surveyed on their vaccination status and intentions, but there are no current plans to make vaccination mandatory for teachers.
The private schools and the catholic education sector have now been asked to do urgent surveys of their teachers’ vaccination status.
It is likely that vaccination rates among teachers are relatively high because half the public sector workforce is over 50 and has had access to AstraZeneca.
The minister is also said to have discussed options for getting other age groups backin classrooms – most likely older high school students.
Because there are no vaccinations currently approved for 12-year-olds and younger, and trials of vaccines in the age group are still not expected until 2022, it is unlikely that there is an easy path to have primary school children return to school unless there is a dramatic drop in cases.
Scott Morrison said this morning it was not “zero restrictions” but he’s focused on the “good hygiene” message which he is calling the “common sense” stuff.
The Doherty Institute advice is more forthcoming and includes more of the social distancing measures we are used to. It stops short of a lockdown, yes, but it still includes things like capacity limits, and if test, trace, isolate and quarantine fails (for instance, too many “mystery cases”), then those public health measures would increase – although again, it stops short of lockdowns.
Continue reading...source https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2021/aug/24/australia-politics-live-news-plan-for-reopening-covid-vaccination-astrazeneca-pfizer-afghanistan-scott-morrison-gladys-berejiklian-daniel-andrews-coronavirus-doherty-institute-chidcare-subsidies
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