After meeting with President Michel Aoun on Wednesday, caretaker Minister of Education Tarek Majzoub announced that the Lebanese official exams will proceed as normal this year unless the health sector deteriorates even further.
In normal times, Lebanese students of Grade 12 must sit the state-run Baccalaureate exams in order to achieve their academic year and be able to enroll in the university.
The exam is held every year in different centers across the country. However, with the current nation-wide coronavirus pandemic, students and their families as well the public in general are objecting due to the involved risks.
They are calling for the state to consult health experts before making such a decision as the vaccination campaign will take several months if not a year for the herd immunity to start working.
“Conducting the official exams is similar to when the country reopened for New Year’s, and it will cause the death of many citizens. The vaccine is not the only solution,” a social media user wrote.
Last year, Minister Majzoub demanded to continue with the Lebanese official exams, before eventually canceling them altogether.
With the decision now to proceed with them, Majzoub requested from authorities to give priority for the vaccination to students and teachers.
On Thursday, his requests were answered as noted by a statement from the caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan. He announced in a press conference that the education sector will receive the vaccine after the health sector in terms of priority so that schools can reopen the soonest.
The vaccination campaign, which will begin this weekend with the arrival of 28,000 doses from Pfizer-BioNTech, aims to achieve herd immunity through vaccinating at least 80% of the 6 million population.
Health sector workers, the elderly, and those with pre-existing health conditions will be given the priority, after which the rest of the population will get vaccinated.
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