Jamaica’s teachers who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 have been put on guard that they will not receive the same treatment as their inoculated counterparts when schools reopen for face-to-face classes in September.

That might include COVID-19 testing and differentiated compensation.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness issued the warning on Monday as he rolled out preliminary restrictive measures to cauterise the emergence of a third wave of the virus.

Schools have, for the most part, been shuttered to hundreds of thousands of students since March 2020 in a bid to rein in transmission, but the restriction has led to stark learning loss across the board. Internet connectivity woes and inaccessibility to computers are believed to have widened the education deficit for poor children.

Holness told journalists that contingencies would be discussed in meetings with the country’s teachers.

“We are not going to make it mandatory for them, but at the same time we would have to consider that teachers who are vaccinated who turn up to work that they are treated in some preferential way and those who don’t turn up to work, we may have to ask them to be tested, and we may have to be considering what should happen regarding how they are remunerated,” the prime minister said.

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