General Education and Health departments in Kerala lack data on teachers yet to get COVID-19 vaccine

The non-availability of data was mentioned in response to an application filed under the Right to Information Act

The departments of General Education and Health have said that they lack data on the number of teachers who have not yet taken the COVID-19 vaccine.

The non-availability of data was mentioned in response to an application filed under the Right to Information Act by Raju Vazhakkala, a resident of Kakkanad. The applicant asked three queries on the status of vaccine taken by teachers in schools under the government and aided sectors.

The first question was on data related to the number of teachers who had taken the two doses of vaccine as on May 2022. He also sought the number of teachers who had not yet taken the first dose. The applicant had also asked about the number of teachers who had failed to take the vaccine on health and religious grounds.

The response filed by the Appellate authority and Joint Director (Statistics) of the Directorate of General Education in Thiruvananthapuram dated August 14, 2022 said the office was not collecting data on the number of teachers who had not yet taken either one or two doses of the vaccine.

The applicant had asked for the total number of teachers in the government and aided schools in the State. To this query, the Directorate of General Education said the number was 1.44 lakh as on the 2020-21 academic year.

A similar application was filed before the Department of Health. The Directorate of Health Department in Thiruvananthapuram said in its reply that it lacked information about the number of teachers who were yet to take the vaccine. The office pointed out that the category-wise vaccine data was not available in the CoWin portal of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The district offices of the Health department also lacked data as it depended on information available on the CoWin portal, it said.