When can Balboa students expect to receive a vaccine?

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By John O.

In different news sources, Balboa students are probably seeing the United States’s effort to provide doses for the entire country. Now that more citizens are receiving vaccines, cases seem to be declining from the spike in January according to the World Health Organization. For almost a year, Balboa students haven’t been able to go to school in person and have been attending online Zoom classes. The vaccine seems to most like a promising end to Zoom classes and might reopen SFUSD schools.

In an article published by UCSF following the question “Do you believe that schools can
reopen?”, it was stated that “Yes, but only with the right safety protocols in place. We have learned a lot since March about how to prevent COVID transmission in schools.” According to this logic, one might think that SFUSD schools may reopen without giving students the vaccine, however we have seen over the past year that SFUSD has chosen not to open schools. One prediction is that SFUSD might reopen schools before the Fall semester, possibly having an in person 21/22 school year. Some information to back this is the Biden Administration’s goal to deliver 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his presidency, which does sound ambitious but seems to be happening. This ambitious vaccine delivery program has started to work, with California announcing delivering 7 million vaccines already.

Balboa students may be wondering when they can get vaccines. Although vaccines for teenagers and children aren’t ready for distribution at this time, they will be in the future. Vaccines may be ready for distribution during summer for teenagers 16 and up, since that is the minimum age for the Pfizer vaccine. However for students under the age of 16, there is little information for when the testing phase will be finished so it is uncertain when students under the age of 16 will receive a vaccine.

The San Francisco Unified School District has been pushing to reopen schools due to backlash from the city residents. Their newest proposal was hybrid learning for the Spring 2021 school year. Full in person school might open in the Fall 2021 school year.

Since the San Francisco Unified School District is pushing more to reopen schools, it is uncertain whether students will return to in person school with or without a vaccine. However recovery from the pandemic will happen, it is just a matter of time.