The unions ask the Government to delay for two weeks the resumption of face-to-face classes to avoid “complete chaos” due to the explosion of infections
The Italian Government has been choked back to school this Monday after the Christmas break due to the explosion of coronavirus cases, with about 200,000 new cases registered yesterday. It is feared that there will be up to 100,000 workers in the education sector, 10% of the total, who due to infections and quarantines will not be able to report to their jobs tomorrow. The estimate comes from Antonello Giannelli, president of the National Association of Directors of Educational Centers, a body that has asked the Executive of Mario Draghi to opt for distance learning to delay the return to face-to-face classes for at least two weeks. . The Government, for the moment, does not give its arm to twist and assures that it will return to the classrooms with all the normality that allows the continuous growth of infections that Italy has been experiencing for almost three months, but that has soared in recent weeks. It is expected that in the coming days up to 400,000 new infections per day will be reached.
“The number of positive students in some schools is already in the hundreds, so it is almost impossible to comply with the planned procedures,” said Giannelli, warning that classes will have to be used en masse over the Internet. The latest government decree provides that they must be resorted to when there are at least three positives per group. Also the unions of workers in the education sector have demanded that the Government forget about a regular ‘return to school’. It’s complete chaos. We ask for a delay of at least two weeks to have a clear idea of what the current situation is. Our concern is above all for the students, “said Elvira Serafini, from the Snals union, who denounced that nothing has been done to ensure that the school year is safely resumed after Christmas.
Childhood infections
The chaos to which the unionist refers seems to be guaranteed by the serious lack of teachers and non-teaching personnel that this new wave of the pandemic leaves and that has in the smallest one of the population groups with the highest percentage of infections. Although Italy began vaccinating children between the ages of 5 and 12 since December 16, only 14% of the 3.6 million children in that age group have received the first injection so far. Precisely the slow progress of the immunization campaign among the youngest is one of the arguments put forward by various regions in their demand for the central government to postpone the return to classrooms in person.
“We have asked in vain for the reopening to be delayed to have time to complete the vaccination of students, particularly the youngest ones, but the Government has been inflexible on this point,” denounced Michele Emiliano, regional president of Apulia, in the southeast of the country. Other regional presidents, such as those of Campania and Sicily, even threaten to turn a deaf ear to the Executive’s decision and delay their return to the classroom on their own.
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