Various educational institutions across Chiang Mai are reporting a dearth of vaccinations made available to teachers and other personnel, pointing to all teachers at private schools being given vaccination priority.
Many teachers, according to a handful of educators who have reached out to the media, have yet to access vaccinations, even though they are officially labelled as priorities for the vaccination. Most private schools, according to the source, have vaccinated most of their teachers, yet there are some rural schools with as many as 50 teachers unvaccinated. Many of these teachers will be expected to wait until September, or even later, in order to get their vaccinations, in spite of schools opening for in class learning.
While there are 10 public schools in Chiang Mai city which are currently restricting in-class learning, teachers say that these measures are not enough to protect them.
One consultant to a school in Mae Rim told CityNews that the vaccine has not been widely made available to the most vulnerable groups, one of which is teachers. Many teachers now have to attempt to receive their vaccinations through other channels.
However, the Chiang Mai Public Health Office denies this accusation, saying that most teachers and those working closely with students have received at least one vaccination so far, but since the office has yet to publish numbers, the public may be misconstrued.
To date, say that office, 826,171 people in Chiang Mai have registered for the vaccine. In total 170,374 doses have been administered to 112,753 people, with the target of 1.2 million people to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.