Ladies and Gentlemen,
yesterday (11 February 2021), during a press conference, the Minister of Education and Science announced that the registration of academics and other individuals running classes with students or doctoral students in accordance with the schedule of studies willing to be vaccinated starts on Monday (15 February 2021) at 8 a.m.
Despite this announcement, we still do not know any details of the procedure of vaccinations for academics. Further ministerial information will follow on Monday at noon. In order to address any concerns or questions that you may have, we present you the current state of our knowledge and plans to prepare for vaccinations at the University of Silesia.
PROCEDURE SPECIFIED BY THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
presented in the letter to Rector of 12 February 2021:
- On 15 February 2021 at 8 a.m. His Magnificence Rector, as the coordinator for vaccinations at the University of Silesia, will get access to the list of individuals entitled to vaccination (specified by the Ministry of Education and Science) including the person’s first name, surname, PESEL number or different identity document.
- The university authorities will be obliged to provide the Ministry of Education and Science with a list of individuals who declared the willingness to be vaccinated. The method of collecting information about the willingness to be vaccinated is an internal decision of the University. The University should provide the Ministry of Education and Science with the following data: first name, surname, PESEL number or different identity document, preferred vaccination point and telephone number.
- The Ministry of Education and Science will verify the data and send the confirmation of their approval to the university. Next, the Ministry of Education and Science will provide the data to vaccination points.
- As soon as the vaccine doses have been delivered to the indicated points, His Magnificence Rector will be informed about the vaccination dates for the employees of the University of Silesia.
INDIVIDUALS ENTITLED TO VACCINATION FROM 15 FEBRUARY 2021:
In accordance with the Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 14 January 2021, amending the regulation on the establishment of specific restrictions, orders and prohibitions due to the pandemic, teachers and academics, as well as other individuals running classes with students and doctoral students at universities in line with the education programme, are included in the vaccination priority group. Due to the lack of detailed guidelines for qualification of individuals in this group, after consultations with the universities associated in the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland, which took place on 12 February 2021, the assumption was made at the University of Silesia that the group entitled to vaccination from 15 February includes the employees who run classes in accordance with the information in USOS system.
The doctoral students who run classes can also use the option of priority vaccination.
In accordance with the applicable regulations, non-academic employees are not subject to priority vaccination at the moment. We have already informed you that both the University of Silesia authorities and the universities associated in the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland took formal action to include administration employees and all doctoral students in the vaccination priority group. As of now, we have not received any response from the Ministry of Education and Science. We will keep you informed about any progress in this case.
Vaccinations for the groups of academics are carried out using the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is intended for people aged under 65, so the vaccination that starts from 15 February is intended for people born after 31 December 1955. This means that academics aged over 65 can only be vaccinated in accordance with the government regulations provided for their age group, and cannot use the university procedure. We do understand the difficult position of many of our employees, who may be vaccinated at a later date due to the lower availability of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. We have been concerned with the security of older members of our community since the beginning of the pandemic, which is why I repeat my appeal to provide special peer support for our colleagues and mentors.
Non-academic employees and doctoral students who do not run classes at the moment will not have access to the declaration form. We are striving to change this situation as soon as possible.
INTERNAL PROCEDURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SILESIA CONCERNING DECLARATION OF WILLINGNESS TO BE VACCINATED
for entitled individuals aged under 65 in the vaccination priority group:
To ensure the effective process of providing data to the Ministry of Education and Science, on 13 February 2021 at 9 a.m. the University will launch the internal registration system, available at: https://formularze.us.edu.pl/szczepienia_covid.
Log in to the system using the same data as for logging in to USOS system. After completing the electronic form, the employee will receive registration confirmation by e-mail.
If you have any technical problems or need support, write to: szczepienie_covid@us.edu.pl. The requests are processed on a first come, first served basis.
Data will be provided to the Ministry of Education and Science every day, probably starting from Monday evening. All applications received until Monday inclusive will have the same time priority.
In the internal registration system, apart from providing data and giving your consent for vaccination, you will also be asked to indicate the preferred location where you would like to be vaccinated. It will be possible to indicate one of our 4 campus cities (Katowice, Chorzów, Cieszyn, Sosnowiec). This will not guarantee that you will be vaccinated in the selected city, because if one vaccination point is overloaded, you may be allocated to a different location.
At this point we do not know the detailed list of vaccination points which will be available for our group. We will provide you with these data as soon as the University receives the relevant information from nodal hospitals, which may happen in the next few weeks. Our goal is to make sure that the oldest employees in the entitled group may use the vaccinations in the first place. The method of informing particular employees about the vaccination date will be determined in the near future.
This Monday at noon, the Ministry of Education and Science is organising a webinar for all universities in Poland, dedicated to the logistics of vaccinations for academics, and we expect to get to know more details then. We ask you to read carefully all information sent and check the University of Silesia homepage.
Information on vaccinations from the Ministry of Education and Science is available at: www.gov.pl/ogolne-zasady-systemu-szczepien-dla-nauczycieli-akademickich-oraz-innych-osob-prowadzacych-zajecia-na-uczelniach.
Prof. Ryszard Koziołek
Rector of the University of Silesia in Katowice
Rektorat Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Fot. materiały UŚ/Rectorate of the University of Silesia