HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 8 (ACN) After the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be over, the new normality is making its way through Cuba and more than 600 thousand children, adolescents and young people will return to the classrooms this Monday to resume and complete the 2020-2021 school year.
Conceived as a staggered, gradual and safe process, the return to face-to-face teaching activities in General Education follows the same three-group scheme, with which the vaccination campaign of the Cuban pediatric population from two to 18 years of age has been carried out.
On this Monday, students in the first two years of Pre-university, Pedagogical Training and Technical and Professional Education, students in the sixth grade of Primary and all Basic Secondary Education and those corresponding to those grades in Special Education will return to school.
This is a large group, much larger than the advanced group of more than 84,500 students of terminal years, who last October 4 began their return to attendance, after receiving the three doses of Abdala.
Those who return today were vaccinated, but with Sovereign 02 and still very fresh that third jab which is a guarantee and offers so much peace of mind and confidence, although it is certainly proven that with only two doses children, adolescents and young people achieve greater immunity against COVID-19 than adults with the three doses.
However, when it comes to preserving health and life, every precaution is too little and there is no reason to rush the times or violate the protocol, hence in the provinces of Mayabeque, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Granma and Holguín, where the vaccination schedule was delayed, the students of that second group will return to school not today, but next Monday, so that they can receive before, like the others, that third dose.
The protection provided by vaccines should not lead, however, to the relaxation or neglect of hygienic-sanitary measures, and in a very recent appearance on the radio program Mesa Redonda, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, Minister of Education, reiterated the strict compliance with health protocols as a priority and premise for this return.
The educational institutions have the “green light” to organize school life according to their conditions and needs, but the common task is to guarantee the greatest possible presence of the students, who have been too long away from school, their classmates, from that direct contact with the teacher, which nothing replaces, and from an environment and a dynamic that they need to recover.