Corpn ensures at least 1 dose for 90% teachers ahead of reopening

CHENNAI: With the schools set to be opened in a few days, the Greater Chennai Corporation has vaccinated 90 per cent of its teachers, at least with one dose.

As per the data, the Chennai Corporation schools have 3,328 teachers of which 2,999 received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, which is 90.1 per cent coverage, as of Saturday morning.

Also, more than half of the total — 2,014 teachers — are given both doses.

Meanwhile, the civic body has completely immunised 759 non-teaching staff of Chennai Corporation schools. There are 2,002 non-teaching staff at Corporation schools. Of these, 1,658 staff got their first doses, which is 84.3 per cent.

The civic body has also made arrangements to follow standard operating protocol and the checklist issued by the state government.

“As the schools open from September 1, students will be allowed to attend classes in two batches. One batch will attend schools on alternate three days of a week and the second batch will attend on remaining days,” a Chennai Corporation official said.

The Chennai Corporation schools have around 45,000 students in Classes 9 to 12. As the students are away from the classes for several months, bridge courses have been planned.

Apart from the teachers, the civic body has administered 13,577 doses to differently-abled persons, of which 10,903 are first doses. Also, as many as 4,674 senior citizens received their first doses while 1,565 senior citizens received their second doses.

In total, the civic body has administered 38,72,322 doses of which 26,86,366 are first doses. In other words, 26,86,366 persons in Chennai received at least one dose.

On Saturday, the civic body commenced a drive to vaccinate staff of private and government colleges. In Chennai, there are as many as 112 colleges.