The priority vaccination for teachers and other employees of the school

Dear Colleagues,

With regard to the frequent questions regarding priority vaccination for teachers and other employees of the school, we bring you the following update based on public information from government authorities:

• AMU as a university has not received a school code required for the registration for vaccination, since, for the time being, such codes have been only sent to schools established under the Schools Act No. 561/2004 as amended (the act on preschool, primary, secondary, higher vocational and other education).
• AMU as a university is governed by Act No. 111/1998 as amended (the Universities Act)
• AMU top officials are conducting intensive negotiations with the Ministry of Education with a view to ensuring that vaccination for school employees also includes universities and AMU. Minister R. Plaga is trying to include university employees in one of the next categories for priority vaccination.
• We are also preparing the organisation of vaccination for our teachers and other employees, so that we are ready when we are invited to register.

Deputy Minister of Education Pavel Doleček wrote the following on this topic in his e-mail dated 28 February 2021: “Regarding the ongoing debate on the vaccination of academic workers, I would like to say the following: At this point, vaccination is only available to the employees of schools and educational facilities registered in the Registry of Schools and School Facilities (i.e., regional education), and not to universities. Academic workers of universities are ranked in group 1b of the Ministry of Health’s priority system, which is the next wave of registrations following healthcare personnel. There are more internal stages set up in the second priority group, since it is not possible to vaccinate all the desired professions immediately due to the staged supplies of vaccines. Hence, in the second priority group, the categories to be vaccinated first will be other critical infrastructure workers, police officers, firefighters, prison guards and school employees. Considering the plans for ensuring that children and students in certain years of preschools, primary schools and secondary schools can return to presence mode of instructions as soon as possible, the educational and other staff of such schools will be vaccinated first, followed by the academic workers of universities in the next wave. The objective is to restore a presence mode of instruction in all types of schools as soon as the epidemic situation permits. In other words, academic workers have certainly not been forgotten. As we have discussed previously, we will discuss suggestions for the further steps to take within our workgroup in the days to come.”

Once we have new information on the possibility for teachers and other AMU employees to register for vaccination (e.g., the aforementioned code), we will inform you as soon as we can.

The option of vaccination will be entirely voluntary; the Deans of Faculties shall consider how to proceed and organise this depending on the type and methods of teaching, and obviously also based on the age and health of the individual teachers and other employees.

If you belong to any group, for which vaccination registration is now open (employees of primary, secondary and art schools, people aged 70+), and want to get vaccinated, do not wait until the registration is open for universities and register now.

All information on vaccination and the access to the reservation system.