The incidences are rising again in some cases above the 100 mark and with them the nervousness in schools. Face-to-face teaching, as the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs had emphasized again and again, is the goal for which one wants to do everything. How is becoming increasingly apparent three weeks before the start of the school year: with voluntary PCR tests before school starts, lollipop pool tests at primary and special schools and with vaccination teams in schools.
The latter was announced by the Ministry of Health and Culture on Thursday. It is the continuation of the program that was introduced shortly before the holidays, rather unsuccessfully: vaccination teams are to come to the schools in coordination with the school, the local vaccination center and the municipality and vaccinate the students. There is no obligation, the program is voluntary – both on the part of the organizers and for the vaccinees.
The response on Friday was correspondingly positive. “You can only support that,” said Andreas Fischer, deputy chairman of the Bavarian School Directors Association and headmaster of a primary school in Landau an der Isar. “That’s exactly what we want.” Martin Löwe from the Bavarian Parents’ Association sees it similarly. “Schools are the place where you can reach all children,” he says. And the SPD and the students also take the initiative positively – with one caveat: Both would have wished for a nationwide campaign coordinated by the Free State: “There can only be one opinion on the subject of vaccination,” said Nevio Zuber from the State School Council.
The responsible Ministry of Health knows that there are several opinions on this subject. Before the summer break, it had already made an offer for vaccination teams at the schools together with the Ministry of Culture. However, at that time this only applied to adult students – the group that at that time was mostly not at the school after the final exams. Since the Stiko vaccination recommendation was valid from the age of twelve, there has been increasing political pressure to promote vaccination in schools. This should now be done on a voluntary basis, as the Ministry of Health emphasizes.
There is still room for improvement in the vaccination rates among young people: According to the Ministry of Health, 25 percent of 12 to 17-year-olds in Bavaria had been vaccinated for the first time by Thursday. It is now up to the headmasters to decide whether to call the vaccination troops over to them. For many, this should not be an easy decision: In many places, they were recently caught between parents who thought wearing masks at school was unreasonable and those who were afraid of sending their child to school for fear of infection. Before the summer, many also stressed that they feared such an action would put pressure on the students. However, Fischer is calm: “No teacher and no headmaster will exert pressure.” It is unlikely to fail because of the capacities in the vaccination centers: there has recently been a lull here.
In the meantime, it is also becoming apparent how accurate the testing should be at the elementary and special schools. Accordingly, the students should be tested regularly with lollipop pool tests. Pool tests, in which the samples from a group are first brought together and tested in one go, had recently proven to be significantly more reliable than rapid tests. That is precisely why associations such as the Education and Science Union are calling for this to be introduced for other schools as well. “They are the means of choice,” says state chairwoman Martina Borgendale.
However, not the means of unlimited possibilities. The Ministry of Health had recently repeatedly emphasized that laboratory capacities were limited. What is certain is that when testing the pool, the focus is now on the youngest who cannot yet be vaccinated. The concept for this was presented to associations on Wednesday; According to reports, they want to imitate North Rhine-Westphalia and commission the management consultancy “Boston Consulting” to set up the structures.
Before that happens, the students should test themselves for the corona virus before returning to school. Minister of Culture Michael Piazolo (FW) made a corresponding urgent appeal before the summer holidays. This is now made more difficult by the fact that PCR tests can only be carried out free of charge at municipal test centers. The air filters are still an open flank in the package of measures: There is a patchwork quilt here – many districts and municipalities have foregone an acquisition for reasons of cost.