UNESCO launches new tool to track COVID-19 tests, vaccinations in schools

04 / 05 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

UNESCO has released a new health and vaccination management tool, OpenEMIS Vaccinations, through a partnership with Community Systems Foundation (CSF), a Global Education Coalition member.

OpenEMIS Vaccinations presents a pathway for countries to track teacher and other school staff vaccination progress, increasing teaching workforce and public confidence in a safe and protected return to in-person or hybrid learning. Free and open to all, the tool facilitates the recording of health information for school personnel and can generate reports to track progress of COVID-19 testing and/or vaccination campaigns in schools. If eventually authorized for use with populations below the age of 16, the tool has the built-in capacity to track students’ COVID-19 vaccinations as well, and can also be used to record student testing for COVID-19.

Ministries and education communities willing to pilot test or use this module to monitor COVID-19 testing or vaccination campaigns can download the web application and its source code from the dedicated OpenEMIS webpage. The knowledge base provides necessary information on this module. OpenEMIS Vaccination can be deployed as a standalone product or easily integrated to an existing EMIS platform or a national Medical Information Systems. It can also be used in conjunction with other components of the OpenEMIS toolkit.

Since the start of vaccine deployment, UNESCO and other partners including Education International and UNICEF have stressed the importance of treating teachers and other school staff as essential workers in vaccine plans, stimulating momentum for safe school reopening and enabling swift return to in-person learning.

At present, 1 in 4 of teachers globally are prioritized in the first phase of national COVID-19 vaccination rollout plans and that 1 in 3 teachers is not included in any priority group, according to UNESCO monitoring of vaccine rollouts.

Worries regarding the risk of returning to school unvaccinated complicate progress toward a successful return to in-person schooling and learning continuity. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that countries prioritize vaccinating education personnel while promoting the safety of school communities alongside all recommended measures for COVID-19 infection control.

The new OpenEMIS tool is part of UNESCO’s support to countries to mitigate the impact of school closures, address learning losses and adapt education systems, particularly for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.