IEU Statement - Victorian outbreak
IEU STATEMENT ON THE VICTORIAN OUTBREAK – 16 JULY 2021
Teachers have been enormously over-represented amongst those who have contracted COVID in the current Victorian outbreak. This only serves to underline what the IEU and others have been saying since last year - schools are very high-risk transmission sites and for the safety of the broader community, school workers must be prioritised in the vaccine rollout.
If the many calls by education unions and independent experts over the last 8 months to prioritise vaccines for education workers had been followed, it seems likely that today we would be facing a smaller and more manageable outbreak here in Victoria.
Parents, students and staff want our schools to remain open. More importantly though, the simple fact is that an unvaccinated workforce in a such a high-contact environment poses an unacceptable risk to the broader community.
The Morrison government can no longer ignore this urgent issue.