Teachers should be among first for COVID vaccine jabs: UN
Agence France-Presse
Posted at Dec 15 2020 04:42 AM
PARIS - The United Nations agency for education, UNESCO, on Monday called on governments to give teachers priority access to the new COVID-19 vaccines and be treated like "frontline" workers.
The call came as the United States, the country worst hit by the virus, kickstarted the biggest vaccination drive in its history by giving the jab to a nurse in New York.
"As we see positive developments regarding vaccination we believe that teachers and education support personnel must be considered a priority group," UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said in a joint video message with the head of the Education International (EI) teachers' organization, David Edwards.
Azoulay and Edwards said when schools and other education facilities were closed to prevent the spread of the virus, "teachers and support personnel remained on the frontline".
As classes moved online they "reinvented the way we teach, we learn," they said, adding that when schools reopened, teachers returned "courageously" to the classroom.
Stressing that schools are "irreplaceable" Paris-based UNESCO and Brussels-based EI called for teachers to be among the first in line to be inoculated.
The US aims to immunize 20 million people by the end of 2020. It launched the program after issuing emergency approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which is already in use in Britain.
Gazan buried as only known victim of Iran’s strikes on Zionist entity --- Agencies
JERICHO, West Bank: A 38-year-old Gazan, the only known fatality in Iran’s missile attack against the Zionist entity, was buried on Wednesday. Sameh Khadr Hassan Al-Asali had been staying in a Palestinian security forces compound in the occupied West Bank when he was killed by falling missile debris during Tuesday’s attack, which the entity said was largely thwarted by its air defense systems. Security forces personnel carried the body draped in the red, green, white and black Palestinian flag. The crowd of about 200 mourners was made up of fellow Gazans staying in Jericho and local people. A large section of the rocket lay on the ground where it fell outside the compound. Around 700 workers from Gaza have been staying in Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago. Unlike citizens of the Zionist entity, who went into bomb shelters after warning sirens sounded across the country, many Palestinians in the West Bank went out to watch the missiles ...
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