COVID-19 vaccination was started on February 26th. The preferential targets of vaccination were made up with the purpose of prevention of virus severity and death. The second targets comprised the medical quarantine and maintain essential social skills. The last targets formed to block the community spread and collective infection. So, people are getting vaccinated sequentially.

▲ People are getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

In this situation, the Ministry of Education promotes the preparation of school attendance of all grades from the second semester if there are no more than 1,000 confirmed cases and when all the teachers are vaccinated. The Ministry of Education announces that it will promote the school attendance of all students since there are a lot of side effects not only in the learning gap but also in terms of emotion and socialization.

▲ Eunhye Yoo, the Minister of Education

However, although they can be added according to clinical results, children, adolescents, and pregnant women are excluded from vaccination for now. Only high school third-grade students will be vaccinated during the summer vacation. For now, health teachers and special teachers are being vaccinated, and next turn will be the kindergarten teachers, elementary school especially second-grade teachers, and care teachers, who take care of students after classes. All the other teachers and workers, and high school third-grade students who will take a national college entrance examination will be vaccinated until August. A professor suggested that there will be no herd immunity in classes when only the teacher is vaccinated since there are 25 to 30 students in one class.

▲ High school 3 students who will be vaccinated during vacation

When schools go back to normal class with COVID-19, quarantine will still be maintained. Promoting the full school attendance, the burden and responsibility of students, teachers, and parents will be higher because the infection prevention of students might go emphasizing on compliance with personal quarantine rules.

May 16th, 2021

by An So-mi