(LifeSiteNews) — Dozens of teachers in Northern Italy called in sick on Monday after receiving vaccinations for COVID-19 over the weekend.

According to yesterday’s Tribuna di Treviso newspaper, “dozens and dozens” of teachers and professors were too ill to teach on Monday morning, having received the AstraZeneca vaccine over the weekend.

“Several teachers were side-lined today, Monday, February 22, in the Marches, thanks to illnesses after taking the vaccine against COVID,” the Tribuna di Treviso wrote.

After getting doses of AstraZeneca’s abortion-tainted vaccine — which is the vaccine of choice for inoculating the Treviso teachers and their colleagues throughout Italy — on Saturday and Sunday, “dozens and dozens of teachers and professors” were unable to come to school.

Those who called in sick reported fevers and aching bones.

According to Breitbart, over 5,000 Treviso teachers were scheduled to receive the vaccine over the weekend. As a result, two middle schools in the area had to close early yesterday because of the staff shortage.

In addition, 15 out of 130 teachers at the Duca di Abruzzi high school were absent due to illness. At the San Domenico Savio primary school, 2 out of 3 teachers called in sick.

However, a local health authority said that these side effects and absences were normal and even suggested that they showed the teachers’ immune systems were working.

According to the Tribuna di Treviso, Michele Mongillo, the director of prevention and public health for the Veneto Region stated,

“We have begun the vaccination with AstraZeneca this week; there have been a few local reactions, especially fever. Over six thousand doses were given, and a few cases of local reactions were reported to our offices. It’s a temporary phenomenon, and on the bright side it shows that the immune system is reacting to the vaccine.”

Earlier this month, the U.K.’s Independent reported that the Italian teachers’ union objected to the plan to inoculate all teachers aged between 18 and 55 with AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

The union believes that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which are in smaller supply in Italy and are being given to the elderly, are more effective against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, France’s vaccination task force has recommended that medical workers from the same departments no longer be given the AstraZeneca vaccine at the same time because of the high incidence of side effects.

It was so high, in fact, that French hospitals had personnel shortages in ICU and COVID-19 units. In one hospital, fully half of the physiotherapists were on sick leave at the same time after accepting the vaccine.

The vaccine was developed by Oxford University together with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca by cultivating the weakened SARS-CoV-2 virus in the HEK-293 cell line derived from the kidney of an aborted baby in the Netherlands.

According to the Oxford Vaccine Centre, these weakened viruses “are purified several times to remove the cell culture material,” adding that “this makes it unlikely that any human material remains in the final vaccine.”

During LifeSite’s online conference last week — Unmasking COVID-19: Vaccines, Mandates, and Global Health — biologist Pamela Acker, who has a master’s degree in Biology from the Catholic University of America and who recently authored a book titled Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective, related what the literature says about how babies were aborted to obtain cell lines used in a number of vaccines.

“A number of these abortions that were done in that way were termed ‘abdominal hysterectomies’ in the medical literature. So in some cases, the women were actually being sterilized in the process as well,” she said.

“They had to maintain a sterile environment because you don’t want any contamination of the tissue with any kind of foreign agents, any bacteria, or viruses, or anything like that.

“The babies were — and, in some cases, the uterus as well — removed from the woman and, without even puncturing the amniotic sac, placed directly into the refrigerator where it was kept for no more than 24 hours.”

“So these babies were literally placed into the fridge alive and then stored between one and 24 hours until they could be dismembered, basically. And this is right there in the scientific literature,” she said.

References: TribunaTreviso.gelocal.it; Breitbart.com