Vaccines: 92.1% of teachers have had at least one jab

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 3 - Some 92.1% of Italian teachers and other school and university staff have had at least one COVID-19 jab, or the single J&& jab, Emergency Commissioner Francesco Figliuolo said in his weekly report Friday.
    This was 1.65% up on the last weekly report.
    Some 7.9% have not had any dose.
    Some 3.7 million people in Italy over the age of 50 have not had any jab, Figliuolo said.
    Italy's head teachers on Friday warned that unvaccinated children would be "marginalized" by classmates wanting to take off their face masks.
    Officials said Friday that the Delta variant now accounted for almost 100% of all new COVID cases.
    The Lazio regional administrative court (TAR) on Thursday rejected a plea from teachers who were suspended because they did not have the COVID-19 Green Pass vaccine passport showing they had been immunized from the virus.
    The TAR said education authorities had acted correctly in suspending the teachers.
    It said the right not to get vaccinated was "not absolute".
    Anti-vax teachers are among the many Italians who have been protesting against the Green Pass. Government tensions rose Thursday after a rightwing League MP voted against the government's Green Pass vaccine passport on Wednesday night.
    Claudio Borghi voted against the government having made the passport compulsory for long-distance trains and buses and domestic airline flights, a move that has sparked widespread protests by anti-vaxxers.
    Planned protests against the Green Pass on trains largely failed to materialise this week, apart from a 30-strong demo outside Rome's Termini Station including militants from the far-right Forza Nuova movement.
    In Naples only two demonstrators came to the main rail station while in Genoa about a dozen protesters turned out, and in Turin one man was arrested.
    In Rimini, an anti-vax stronghold, just a handful of 'No Green Pass' protesters made it to the station.
    Carabinieri police on Thursday escorted a teacher who had come to school without the Green Pass vaccine passport out of the building in Turin.
    It was the second day in a row that French teacher Giuseppe Pantaleo had presented himself at the Istituto Curie-Levi high school without the passport, which is compulsory for teachers and other staff across Italy.
    Premier Mario Draghi on Thursday reiterated a plea for all Italians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and voiced "solidarity" with those who had fallen victim to the "odious violence" of anti-vaxxers. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, health officials and journalists have received repeated death threats because of their pro-vax stances.
    He also said the jab would be made compulsory in Italy and recommended a third booster jab starting with the vulnerable.
    (ANSA).