Vaccinating children under 12 is not currently part of the plan in the fight against coronavirus, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Tuesday.
“I can say that vaccinating children under the age of 12 is not on our agenda,” Koca told reporters at Parliament in the capital Ankara.
Koca reiterated that random PCR testing in schools will continue. The practice started in pilot schools within the scope of COVID-19 measures introduced after the resumption of in-person classes in September.
The country reopened schools for in-person education while the cases were still relatively low. The resumption came months after the start of a normalization process in which all curfews and most other restrictions were lifted, following a strict lockdown. Schools were closed for most of 2020, though authorities and experts have voiced concerns that further delays to in-person education would hurt children’s development in the long run.
In-person education resumed in parallel with a boost in the country’s vaccination program, and the majority of teaching staff at schools have been inoculated. Children are exempt from vaccination, which is not mandatory for adults either. Still, children between the ages of 12 and 15 are eligible for shots if they suffer from a chronic disease. In-person education is occasionally disrupted due to cases reported at schools but authorities opt for shutting down the classroom in which the cases are reported, instead of closing down entire schools. Students can return to school once their quarantine period ends.
Pointing to surveys that showed the positive-test rate was “not very high” in school-age children, as opposed to the general population, Koca assured that “there is nothing to worry about it.”
