Are Teachers a Priority for the Coronavirus Vaccine?

In her first one-on-one network interview since her inauguration, Vice President Kamala Harris cheered on teachers getting the coronavirus. Though she did not say whether vaccinations should be a prerequisite for reopening schools across the country, the Vice President emphasized prioritizing Covid-19 vaccinations for teachers.

Before the interview with TODAY show anchor Savannah Guthrie, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines had unequivocally stated that teachers do not need to get vaccinated to go back to school. Several infectious disease experts have also said that schools are not a primary source of Covid-19 transmission. However, teachers’ unions across the country have opposed the reopening of schools and more than half of the states have not made vaccines for teachers a priority.

During the interview, the Vice President said that teachers should be able to “teach in a safe place and expand the minds and the opportunities of our children.” This, she claimed, could be supported by the passage of another Covid-19 relief package, which would give schools the financial flexibility to enforce necessary safety measures after they opened.

The CDC has claimed that schools must take the rate of infection in the community into account while deciding on an opening date. However, Harris said that the issue had moved beyond statistics and was in fact about American students. She said that students were “missing essential, critical days in their educational development,” which should be a matter of concern.

In a statement released on the same day as the interview, White House’s lead Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said that President Joe Biden and the Vice President believed that teachers should be on par with frontline workers for vaccination. However, the administration agreed with the CDC guideline that vaccinating teachers was not “a requirement to reopening schools.” President Joe Biden has stated that a part of his administration’s goal was to open as many K-8 schools as possible within the first 100 days of his presidency.