China News Service, Hong Kong, September 1st (Reporter Han Xingtong) On September 1, Hong Kong ushered in a new semester under the epidemic.

Under the urgent need to build an immune barrier, whether it is kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, or universities, the new crown vaccination rate has become a prerequisite for the restoration of face-to-face classrooms and normal campus life.

  On August 2, the Education Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government took the lead in making the decision to link the COVID-19 vaccination rate with the resumption of face-to-face classrooms, announcing that all kindergartens, primary and secondary schools and private schools offering informal courses in Hong Kong will continue for half a day in the 2021/2022 school year Face-to-face courses, but added a prerequisite-all school staff must receive at least one dose of the new crown vaccine from September 1st. If they do not have a doctor's certificate to prove their health, they must be tested at their own expense every two weeks.

  On this basis, if a school has completed two doses of COVID-19 vaccine and the number of directly hired faculty members and students in the school for more than 14 days have reached 70%, they can apply to resume normal campus life, including full-day face-to-face classes and lunch. , Participate in extracurricular activities.

  The Director of the Education Bureau Yang Runxiong also wrote an article on social networking sites a few days ago that vaccination is the most important step in order to return campus life to normal.

He thanked the vaccinated faculty, students and parents for building a more effective anti-epidemic barrier for the campus, and once again called on others to act as soon as possible.

  Deng Fei, vice chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers and head of the Tseung Kwan O Xiangdao Middle School, said in an interview with a reporter from China News Agency that in the case of the threat of variant viruses and the low coverage of the new crown vaccine in Hong Kong, to ensure the safety of school teachers and students , The relevant arrangements of the Education Bureau are reasonable.

  The school’s current teacher vaccination rate is nearly 90%. “The remaining ones are indeed not suitable for vaccination due to health reasons.” The specific number of students’ vaccination is yet to be counted. The vaccination rate for secondary six students has exceeded 70%, so the school is applying for secondary six students to resume full-time face-to-face classes.

  Tang Jisheng, vice president of the Hong Kong Medical Council Licensed Doctors Association, also agrees with the Education Bureau's approach. On the one hand, it can reduce the risk of cross-infection caused by the gathering of teachers and students in schools, and on the other hand, it can encourage more people to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

  At the same time, various universities have also made vaccination as a requirement for restoring campus life based on their actual conditions.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong Baptist University have successively sent internal emails asking all teachers and students to be vaccinated against the new crown, otherwise they must be tested regularly. If they fail to do both, they will be prohibited from entering the campus.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong stated that if it does not meet the requirements, it will not be assigned a student accommodation, and the University of Hong Kong requires the boarding students to test at their own expense.

  “Inter-family transmission through young people’s infection at school is the main channel for the spread of most respiratory viruses.” Hong Kong’s respiratory specialist Liang Zichao pointed out that although past data showed that the infection rate of young people with the new coronavirus is low, variant viruses have emerged. The latter argument no longer holds true, and the proportion of young people infected and the proportion of people taking the virus home is rising rapidly.

Therefore, he believes that it is reasonable for universities to require teachers and students to be vaccinated against the new crown.

  Liang Zichao emphasized that increasing the coverage of vaccines in schools can only be regarded as an auxiliary means of the overall epidemic prevention strategy, and the most important thing is to prevent the importation of variant viruses from the source to block the introduction of variant viruses into the community.

(over)