National Guard is looking for centers to vaccinate Education employees

the Puerto Rico National Guard (GNPR) has requested today, Thursday, the cooperation of mayors to identify seven localities that can be used as vaccination centers for teachers and teaching staff of public and private schools, as well as universities.

The expectation is that these facilities can be ready on or before January 18, said GNN Assistant General Jose Reis.

The request occurred today, as part of a meeting between the associate and federated mayors, with the leadership of the GNPR and the Department of Health.

“It is a large population, which will be a separate initiative from other regional vaccination centers,” he said of about 42,000 employees of the Department of Education (DE), as well as staff from private schools, universities and preschools.

Teaching and non-teaching staff will be vaccinated simultaneously with those in sub-phase 1b, which affects approximately 400,000 people over the age of 65 and close to 200,000 people working as first responders such as police, firefighters and medical emergencies.

ED nursing staff begin appropriate training to be certified as vaccine suppliers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These are about 900 health professionals who will be distributed in the seven regional centers to administer vaccines to educational staff.

The Secretary of Health, Carlos Mellado, stressed that the opening of schools is conditional on staff being vaccinated, that the percentage of infections be appropriate and how the new strain of virus behaves.

“We proposed a goal because if we don’t have a goal we will be talking about opening schools (for) a whole year,” Mellado commented.

Meanwhile, the appointed Secretary of Education, Elba Aponte, has indicated that they have prepared draft plans for the return to face-to-face classes. He acknowledged that in some municipalities such as Guánica, temporary schools will have to be enabled because the infrastructure of the nurseries was severely damaged. He explained that of the 855 schools that the DE left open, approximately 140 are classified as unfit or partially fit after the earthquakes.

Keep up with the goal for the summer

On the other hand, Reyes is confident that the goal of reaching 80% vaccination in the population of Puerto Rico will be achieved by this summer, as he assured that soon more vaccines will be produced and exported of the 30,000 weekly which currently arrive in Puerto Rican ports. “As production increases, 100,000 vaccines a week should be arriving in Puerto Rico at some point, but that will be staggered,” the general said.

He estimated that, between 16 and 18 January, 70 or 80% of vaccinations had been given to the health professionals who make up the first phase.