Index – Economics – Teachers do not want to open the school on April 19

Education workers and many health professionals are alarmed and fear that they will have to return to classrooms as of April 19, even days after the first vaccination, according to a decree issued over the weekend, according to a statement. set submitted to the Index by several large Hungarian teacher organizations.

For this reason, among others, the representatives of the Teachers Union and the Democratic Union of Teachers want the government to guarantee safe working conditions for those who work in education.

That is, attendance education is prescribed only when vaccinated educators have developed full protection after vaccinations.

We ask the government not to insist on a fictitious date for the reopening of schools, when the protection of the multitude of educators is certainly not enough, but to provide an adequate period for immunization after a mass vaccination organized over a weekend.

As they argue, medical director Cecília Müller also regularly points out that vaccination against the coronavirus does not provide immediate protection, it can take up to two to three weeks for adequate immunization to develop. Not to mention that full protection of the vaccinated is achieved after the second dose of the vaccine. (For example, the second dose of Pfizer, Sputnik, and Sinopharm can be given after 3 weeks.)

The signatories of the declaration:

• Professor Ernő Duda emeritus, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, geneticist, virologist, immunologist;
• László Balkányi PhD, former knowledge engineer at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control;
• President Zsuzsa Szabó, Teachers Union;
• Anna Komjąhy National Electoral President, Democratic Union of Teachers;
• László Gyimesi, vice president of the Hungarian Dancers and Musicians Union;
• József Tóth, President of the Hungarian Public Education and Vocational Training Union;
• András Bardócz-Tódor, Co-President, Union of Christian Teachers.

(Cover image: The teacher writes on the blackboard before the written history enrollment test at Sándor Csoma Baptist Secondary School in Kőrösi, Budapest, on May 6, 2020. Photo: Zoltán Balogh / MTI)