Back to School for Fragile Teachers: The Anti-Cunning Rules

The argument is sensitive, the practice complicated, the rules if they are too rigid run the risk of excluding even those who have a legitimate right from protection. But since the director of the regional office of the Veneto school, Carmela Palumbo, denounced that hundreds of requests for “exemption” of the activity have arrived in the presence of teachers and especially auxiliary personnel, the issue has become the next stumbling block on the road to reopening schools. As in Veneto, in fact, also in Liguria, Campania and even Tuscany, the questions are thousands. And the directors don’t know what to do.

Surveillance

For this reason, the ministry circular containing the rules for fragile workers is almost ready at the Ministry of Health. Meanwhile, it serves to clarify the requirements and the procedure to follow to know the health conditions. In fact, until now, the anti-Covid regulations provided for a generic “special health surveillance” for workers over 55 years of age and a pathology that made it dangerous to expose themselves to the risk of contagion. However, given that 40 percent of teachers, and the same number of assistant and secretarial staff, are over 55, the rule is a bit generic. So the circular explains that it is okay to apply to the principal, but to get the actual exemption, age is not enough. You need to be certified by an Inail physician and you must be suffering from a “clinically poorly compensated condition.” A definition that doctors still consider ambiguous because it is technically interpretable and discretionary. Some more indications emerge from the report prepared ten days ago by the Higher Institute of Health for the management of cases of infection at school. What are the diseases that determine greater worker frailty compared to Covid? Some chronic degenerative types, such as cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic pathologies or pathologies that affect the immune system or oncological (regardless of age). Define the condition of fragility of the worker – concludes the ISS – advanced age is not enough, there must be two or more pre-existing pathologies that, in case of Sars-CoV-2 infection, could determine “A more serious or ominous outcome.”