The Ministry of Education, or rather the office of Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton, is pushing hard for the cancellation of the isolation plan and calls for the return of students (both vaccinated and unvaccinated) to the school after performing one antigen test.
That is, any student (not just an isolation exemption) who is exposed to a verified patient will do an antigen test, and if the result is negative - he will be able to return to school on the same day (instead of the current day, where unvaccinated students are sent for five days).
But one should pay attention to the issue from several aspects: First, both the Teachers 'Union headed by Yaffa Ben-David and the teachers' organization led by Ran Erez support the idea.
This is because they were assured that what would apply to the students would also apply to the teaching staff.
That is, if this is indeed the case, even unvaccinated teaching staff and assistants will be able to return to educational institutions without isolation and on the basis of an antigen test only.
Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
In general, the question arises as to whether this will also apply to teaching staff, ie graduates of the population - how will they oblige the rest of the population to act differently and enter isolation to the extent that they are not vaccinated, since this is discrimination.
Apart from that, it is worth looking at the data in the education system as well: the proposed outline will not apply immediately, but the Ministry of Health wants to postpone its start to the end of the month, as we are now at the height of the disease wave.
In Israel, there are about 2.5 million students in the education system, and as of the beginning of the week, the percentage of students exempt from isolation (vaccinated and recovering) is about 44%.
These students can come to school anyway even if they have met verified, and provided they have done a quick antigen test (home or institutional).
Yesterday, there were 146,000 active Corona patients in the education system, and another 22,000 sick teaching staff, with more than 32,000 new teachers and students being infected every day - and the claim is that the peak is still ahead of us.
This means that the system is becoming infected, on the one hand, but on the other hand - by the end of the month hundreds of thousands of students and teaching staff (possibly more than half a million) will already be exempt from isolation due to the fact that they got vaccinated (and another, smaller Only one antigen test to return to learning.
Yaffa Ben David, Photo: Yossi Zeliger
Prof. Tzachi Grossman, chairman of the Association of Pediatricians, commented on the issue of the forthcoming decision on exemption from isolation for children:
"We tried to learn what the characteristics are in the UK and the US." Currently, there is no increase in PIMS cases, but we will look into that in the coming week. "
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