Belgian schools are open. But teachers, left off the vaccine priority list, are rethinking the risks.
By Michael Birnbaum and Quentin Ariès,
Francisco Seco AP
European teachers have generally been more willing than their American counterparts to engage with students in classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic. But Belgian teachers who found themselves left off a priority list for vaccinations are threatening to strike unless they receive doses.
The dispute may foreshadow more disruptions to fragile pandemic-era arrangements, as some groups decide they are less willing to take risks now that society could choose to inoculate them — but won’t until vaccines are in greater supply.
In Belgium, teachers have been working in classrooms for most of the school year, including when their country’s infection rates were the worst in the world in October. Students up to age 13 are attending school full time, while older students have a mix of half in-person, half remote. So the decision to leave teachers off the priority list and vaccinate police officers and other professions ahead of them was a surprise to many educators.
“We have seen in recent days a 180-degree U-turn,” said Marc Mansis, secretary general of Belgium’s Professional Association of Free Education Staff, a teachers union. “Teachers were essential workers, but apparently they are not anymore.”
In the United States, where about half of students are learning from home, 28 states and the District have begun offering vaccines to teachers. Many teachers have asked for vaccines before they start teaching inside classrooms again. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has encouraged states to prioritize teachers, while also advising that vaccination is not necessary to safely reopen classrooms.
[While Biden pushes to reopen schools, Europe moves in the opposite direction]
But whereas the arrival of vaccines in the United States has accelerated the movement back into classrooms, in some European countries, the rollout and related controversies could lead to the closure of schools.
Mansis said he was surveying members about whether to go on strike after a school vacation that began this week. Other teachers’ unions have also threatened to strike.
John Thys
AFP/Getty Images
Teachers at the Sainte-Croix Elementary School mark the recommended social distancing on the school’s playground in May. Belgian schools have remained open for much of the pandemic.
Italian teachers, too, have expressed frustration at their country’s vaccination plans. Italy is offering the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to teachers and other at-risk workers, while directing doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to elderly populations, for whom the AstraZeneca data is more limited. But the main teachers union complained last week that its members should get access to Pfizer and Moderna, which showed 95 percent efficacy in late-stage clinical trials, compared with AstraZeneca’s 70 percent rate.
The immediate spark for teacher discontent in Belgium came earlier this month, when the government announced how it planned to use an upcoming infusion of AstraZeneca doses, which it, like Italy, will target toward people younger than 55.
Health-care professionals will be first in line. Then residents and staff of residential care institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals and rehab centers. Then people who have medical conditions that put them at risk for severe covid. And then front-line police officers, paramedics and soldiers carrying out operations in high-risk areas.
The number of people in those categories is probably larger than the number of doses that will be available, policymakers say. Teachers want to be included alongside police officers and paramedics, instead of having to wait months longer to be vaccinated alongside the general population.
Belgian policymakers have defended their position with some of the same arguments they have used to keep schools open. They cite data suggesting that schools are not major drivers of the pandemic and that teachers do not appear to be at greater risk than other professions. Studies of coronavirus spread among children suggest that they are about half as likely to catch the virus as adults. So, policymakers say, in a situation in which there are very limited doses of vaccines, others need to come ahead of teachers.
“The approach is by no means a value judgment on the professions exercised in Belgium, but is the result of the logistical and operational context linked to the delivery of vaccines in Europe,” said Sabine Stordeur, a project manager at the commission working to shape Belgium’s vaccination strategy.
But teachers point to rising numbers of cases in classrooms. Inside primary schools in Belgium’s French-speaking community, there have been 297 cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks — six times the caseloads in the first two weeks of class in January, according to data from regional authorities. Incidence inside the primary schools is now higher than among the general Belgian population, where there have been 278 cases per 100,000 over the past two weeks. Cases in secondary schools are lower than the population at large, at 221 per 100,000.
And health authorities say coronavirus cases have spread within the walls of at least 119 schools in the past two weeks: 4.8 percent of all French-community schools.
Anthony Dehez
BELGA MAG/AFP/Getty Images
The Saint-Bernard Primary School in Arlon, Belgium, closed in January after a student tested positive for the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa.
Some public health experts attribute the increase at least partially to the spread of the more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in Britain, which makes all activities riskier. Belgian public health officials estimate the variant will be predominant within weeks.
Teachers’ unions say that the people making the rules don’t appreciate what teachers face.
“They don’t understand the risks. With the temperatures we have now, you cannot open the windows of the classrooms. And in many classrooms, it is impossible to respect social distancing measures,” said Joseph Thonon, the head of the CGSP teachers union. “It is simple: If we want to keep schools open, then teachers must be a priority.”
Birnbaum reported from Riga, Latvia, and Ariès reported from Brussels.
