RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, together with the authorities of the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP), decided to stop the implementation of the protocols announced on Wednesday, February 23, by the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) regarding quarantine times in case of outbreaks in educational centers, and which deepened the distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated minors against covid-19.
On Thursday, February 24, Lacalle Pou held talks with the Minister of Education, Pablo Da Silveira, the president of ANEP, Robert Silva, and the Minister of Public Health, Daniel Salinas, which raised questions of “discrimination”.
According to the guidelines presented, children under 18 years of age with two or three doses of the vaccine – or who have been infected in the last 60 days – would not have to be isolated in an outbreak in their class. On the other hand, children with only one dose or unvaccinated would have to be isolated for eight days and could be re-integrated earlier if they have a negative rapid test. Thus, for example, an asymptomatic unvaccinated child would have to be isolated for more than a week, while a vaccinated child could attend school.
The president said that the government “does not want to have policies that in any way can discriminate,” and that is why “it will not apply them”. In addition, he mentioned it as inconvenient “to change everything planned” a “few days” before the start of classes.
“I want to be very clear on this, as has happened throughout the pandemic. Public Health recommended some actions, and then the corresponding area, in this case respecting the autonomy of education, makes a decision, which in this case is going to be sensibly different from the recommendation of the Ministry of Public Health,” said Lacalle, who insisted that the MSP “did not make a protocol,” but “made a recommendation.” “The protocols have to be accepted by the Executive Branch,” he said.
When presenting the guidelines a day earlier, the Public Health authorities had indicated that the new requirements would be included in an ordinance that would be released in the following hours and that it would be sent to ANEP’s Central Board of Directors (Codicen) authorities “so that their technicians could consider them”.
In any case, both the page of the MSP and that of the Presidency of the Republic reported Salinas’ declarations as the announcement of new “protocols”. The Presidency page reported that “the MSP presented the update of the testing and isolation protocols” and that Salinas “detailed the changes in the protocols for contacts, teachers or students”.
In Wednesday’s conference, Salinas affirmed: “In school and high school, children and adolescents who have had covid-19 in the last 60 days will not be quarantined and neither if they have two or three vaccines according to the scheme for their age or comorbidity status. I reiterate isolation will not be requested if they are fully vaccinated. Those, on the contrary, who have one dose or are not vaccinated, or have not been vaccinated for more than 60 days can be reinstated on the eighth day of the last exposure. At the tertiary level, quarantine will not be requested in any case, only self-monitoring of symptoms”, he added.
THE QUESTIONS
Codicen’s technical teams received on Wednesday, February 23, the documents from the MSP and started an analysis that, according to sources of the organism, will continue in the following days. The Codicen councilors began to discuss its possible implementation. They warned that, in addition to the questioning due to the discrimination against unvaccinated children, the Public Health guidelines entailed “difficulties from the practical point of view”, that is to say, of its implementation.
The Minister of Education and Culture, Pablo Da Silveira, said that his portfolio was “talking in these hours” with the MSP to avoid applying the protocols.
“To me personally, it is a decision that I would not like to take. We are talking in these hours to find ways so that it is not necessary to do so,” said Da Silveira, consulted about the new demands previously criticized by pediatricians and education workers.
“We are talking in these hours about this issue. Reality is very dynamic. Let’s hope that, by the day classes start, we can have made some limits more flexible in favor of the proper functioning of the educational communities,” Da Silveira added on Thursday.
Salinas said the ministry’s guidelines are “very far” from constituting “discrimination.” “On the contrary, you notice that until last year, for one case in a class, all children were quarantined for 14 days. And now, at the five-year-old level onwards, we are moving to a regime of no quarantine for one case, only for two or three, inclusive. There may be two or three cases that do not constitute an outbreak,” he said. “There is no discrimination of any kind. So much so that an unvaccinated child, if they have had the disease, can attend school. That is the demonstration that there is no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated,” he added.
The minister also said that the “recommendations” were made “by highly dedicated and prestigious experts, under a risk assessment criterion” and noted that in the next few hours, they would come out to “explain” the grounds.
Pediatrician Álvaro Galiana, one of those who worked on the drafting of the guidelines, told Informativo Sarandí that, in his opinion, a “differentiation” was provided for but “not discrimination”.
“There is a biological difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated individual. It is differentiation and not discrimination. We have to think about the individual and general aspects of the educational center. No one wants it to be a place where children can become infected. It is a medical issue that has to be taken into account. We try to keep the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated children to a minimum, but the unvaccinated child could indeed infect more days than the vaccinated child. The educational center has to be a safe place,” he argued.
Pediatrician Sebastián González Dambrauskas, on the other hand, thought that the differentiation “is terrible news”, “contrary” to what had been expressed in November. “It is not understood why in the face of a mild disease when it is known that vaccination does not prevent infection, we are treating them differently depending on whether they are vaccinated or not,” he argued.
Gustavo Giachetto, a pediatrician and member of the National Advisory Commission on Vaccination, said that “the new protocol for action in schools is very complex to justify, understand, and apply”.
The MSP’s decision went against the initial recommendation issued by the Vaccine Advisory Commission in November when it approved vaccination against coronavirus in children between five and 11 years of age. The agency emphasized that vaccination status “should not be a limiting factor in this age group for their access to any activity”.