In July, news of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all eligible public and private school students broke quietly in Puerto Rico.
Without massive protests or threats of violence — and even before it was required — the bulk of the island’s youth aged 12 to 17 received vaccinations in May and June.
In order to return to school in person post-summer break, all eligible students were required to show proof of receiving at least one dose. Today, 89 percent of the young population are at least partially vaccinated – a rate higher than any other mainland U.S. state or territory.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
And the CDC reports 98 percent of Puerto Rico’s school workforce of roughly 60,000 is vaccinated.
“In Puerto Rico, the pandemic was never politicized,” Daniel Colón-Ramos told NBC News back in March. “People were really rowing in the same direction.”
Colón-Ramos is a professor of cellular neuroscience at Yale University and president of Puerto Rico’s Scientific Coalition, a group of experts advising Gov. Pedro Pierluisi on the island’s COVID-19 response.
Edgar Bonilla, a single father of three living in Caugus, a mountainous city about 20 miles south of San Juan, said this of the efforts to get students vaccinated: “They urgently needed to get students back to school in person because they couldn’t take it anymore. They were hurting and needed to be there, with their teachers.”
‘scientific evidence’
Before the school year, Bonilla’s 14- and 15-year-olds excitedly got both doses before this school year. Their household continues to wear masks outside their home and washes their hands regularly, to protect their unvaccinated 11-year-old sister.
And at the Bonillas’ public high school, youth stay in the same classroom all day. Only teachers rotate between rooms, to make any student quarantines smaller and easier to roll out. Lunch is outside, in small groups with open air, or in smaller-capacity classrooms for younger children.
Overall, there are more states that ban vaccine mandates for school staff (14) than have instituted them (11). In further contrast, when Puerto Rico did announce its mandates, no formal opposition followed.
Following a July vaccine order for all government employees, Pierluisi also issued a mandate in August that many private businesses, including restaurants, salons, casinos and gyms, require all employees to show proof of vaccination.
Those claiming an exemption must show negative test results weekly. Businesses must also require that their customers show proof of vaccination or cut capacity by 50 percent.
The constant guidance from health and government officials has helped families return to in-person learning, though some schools are now facing closures amid a wave of random blackouts unrelated to the pandemic.
In addition to dealing with infrastructure damage from years of destructive hurricanes, Puerto Rico’s circa 1976 power generation units are twice as old as those stateside and due for major replacements.
For many, vaccination is the one factor they can control to keep children in school.
Daniel Pacheco, for instance, says there’s a “responsibility” felt among families when it comes to the mandates.
His family of four lives in Aguadilla, a city of about 55,000 on the island’s northwest tip where about 73 percent of the population has been vaccinated and has seen the pandemic’s impact firsthand. His wife, Marizabel, is a nurse.
“My wife and I think the same way, that teachers in direct contact with children have to be vaccinated to avoid the spread,” he said.
“I think [the vaccine] should be approved and given to all kids because there’s already scientific evidence that it’s really beneficial for them to get vaccinated.”
‘youth are very aware’
While parents in Puerto Rico say there hasn’t been much widespread hesitation, a recent parent poll across the U.S. revealed roughly 51 percent would vaccinate their children when eligible.
Low adolescent vaccination rates raise concern for recently opened mainland schools now facing threats of closure with student and staff quarantines. As of Oct. 10, COVID-19 outbreaks in the 2021-22 school year precipitated about 2,265 school closures in 580 districts according to one website that tracks school policies and schedules.
But in Puerto Rico, community groups helped administer vaccines, which may have made the difference for small populations skeptical of the government or pharmaceutical industry. And the island’s strategy of spreading secure information at the local level could help Puerto Rico reach herd immunity, local journalist and mother Paola Arroyo said.
Similar to the anti-vaccination camps on the mainland, some of those holding out, “are not very aware of how beneficial the vaccine is and are carried away by fake news on social networks or platforms that aren’t necessarily official,” Arroyo said.
A 29-year-old resident of Guaynabo, just outside of San Juan on the northern coast, Arroyo stays cautiously hopeful. She regularly sees youth, even infants, wearing masks outside and taking stock of health guidelines posted outside businesses.
“Youth are very aware of the problem that we’re confronting,” she said. “They’re more aware than adults themselves.”
Marianna McMurdock writes for The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education in America. This story comes through our partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about social issues. It originally appeared online here.
How Puerto Rico reached high vaccination numbers
Since vaccines began rolling out, Puerto Rico has boasted higher-than-average vaccination rates. The efforts on this island of about 3 million are outperforming mainland U.S. states.
While Puerto Rico has faced serious hardship, it appears to have pulled together in the face of COVID-19 in a way that has eluded other Americans.
Scholars, residents and local leaders attribute Puerto Rico’s comparative success to far-reaching mandates across industries, lower political polarization, older generations’ trust in a once-public health care system and a common belief in getting students back in classrooms — by any means necessary.
Puerto Rico’s work provides an opportunity for a case study of successful adolescent vaccination, as most U.S. states struggle to get shots into their school-age population.
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