Work coordination meeting on giving COVID-19 vaccine to 12 years and above students of high and middle schools of Basic Education Department, Ministry of Education held
Nay Pyi Taw September 30
A work coordination meeting on giving COVID-19 vaccine to 12 years and above students of high and middle schools of the Basic Education Department, Ministry of Education was held at the meeting hall of Bayintna-ung Villa here this afternoon with an address by Vice Chair-man of State Administration Council Deputy Prime Minister Vice-Senior General Soe Win.
Also present were Union Mini-ster for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Dr Thet Thet Khaing, deputy ministers, senior military officers of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army) and departmental per-sonnel. Chief ministers and regions and states and officials took part in the meeting through video conferencing.
In his address, the Vice-Senior General said the meeting is held to discuss necessary prepara-tions for the vaccination of high school and middle school students, the vaccination programs based on availability of vaccines, work facilitation arr-angements and cooperation programs.
Over 400,000 new cases were detected and 8,800 persons died of the virus yesterday dur-ing the third wave in the entire world. Till 30 September, the world had over 234 million confir-med cases and over 4.7 million deaths. According to yesterday’s list, the infection rate in Myan-mar was 8.3 percent. According to the target of the chairman of COVID-19 Prevention, Control and Treatment Central Com-mittee the chairman of SAC, international standard and WHO specifications, the country is striving to reduce the infection rate to fall below 5 percent and then to zero infection. The coun-try also aims at vaccinating 50 percent of its population of age 18 and above at the end of December 2021. The COVID-19 Control and Emergency Re-sponse Committee is striving in harmony with the region and state emergency response teams to reach the goals in launching vaccination programs.
The central committee chair-man had striven to reopen the schools to save an academic year. But schools were temporarily closed again because of the third wave that arose on a glo-bal scale and infection rate was high in the country.
Currently, infection rate is not as high as in the past as it has fallen to 7 or 8 percent. So, preparations are underway to reopen the schools after the end of long October holidays to safe an academic year and to protect the students from COVID-19 infection and ensure health and fitness in pursuing their education. In reopening the schools all the high school and middle school students must be fully vaccinated.
Mutual trust and safety can be ensured among students, parents and teachers only after they have been fully vaccin-ated. Sector-wise cooperation is required for the success of the vaccination programs and correctness of the lists and figures. It is still not possible to designate the time when the infection ends and there are suggestion for giving one more shot six months after the second shot.
The government is striving to ensure a continuous supply of vaccines. It is also striving to produce vaccines under the ReadytoFill system to reach this end and coordination is underway to start it before the end of this year. So, people can be vaccinated every six months and the infection rate can be reduced to a certain degree. SWRR Ministry is arranging the participation of Red Cross members, maternal child welfare associations and women’s affairs associations in the vaccination programs. Involvement of teachers, in addition to the teams formed by SWRR Ministry, will facilit-ate the vaccination programs and ensure greater success. All region/state governments should make preparations and connections for accelerating the vaccination programs.
He then invited discussions for the completion of vaccination programs safety and quick-ly and compiling systematic statistics.
The SWRR union minister presented a report on a project to assist the vaccination pro-grams, the deputy education minister on enrollment and attendance of high school and middle school students in the entire country, the deputy health minister on Sinovac injection programs, followed by sector-wise discussions.
Officials of regions, states and Nay Pyi Taw council explained the area-wise enrollment and attendance of students.
In response, the Vice-Senior General spoke of the need to pay serious attention to finalizing the statistics and starting the vaccination programs before the schools reopen to protect students from infection of the virus. He also stressed the need to make preparations in regions and states, cooperation among departments to issue NRCs for students to prevent the occurrence of errors in the school enrollment programs, to launch awareness programs especially for parents, and to announce the places where vaccination programs will take place.
In his concluding speech, the Vice-Senior General said it is necessary to submit the data on strength of students, enrollment numbers and attendances to the schools in regions and states in comparison with the final facts and figures. The data must comprise the combine accounts of regions and states in addition to that of basic education schools, monastic education schools and private schools in townships separately. The Tatmadaw and the Myanmar Police Force need to systematically combine the squads to take security measu-res for the vaccination tasks. The vaccination centres must be set at the focal points, easily accessible for students and pa-rents in respective townships. He stressed the need to submit the complete vaccination projects of regions and states. Number of vaccinated students must be recorded. Depending on recei-ving the vaccines in regions and states, it is necessary review the progress of vaccination, re-maining of vaccine stocks and future plans not to cause waste in vaccination with concerted efforts.
Delta variant of COVID-19 in the third wave infected some children in some countries. Vaccination of Sinovac manu-factured by China can protect the children against the virus and effectively reducing the severe impacts of the pandemic with minimizing side effects. So far, Sinovac vaccine has been given to the children and youths—63 million of children and youths between the aged 3 and 17 in China, more than 1.1 million of children and youths between the aged 12-17 in Chile and over 350,000 youths between aged 6-17 in Cambodia.