MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) announced yesterday the postponement of the opening of classes in colleges and universities to June 15.
CHED Chairman Emmanuel Angeles said the postponement was a precaution against the possible spread of the A(H1NI) Influenza virus.
He said the one-week period would allow the self-quarantine of foreign and Filipino students coming from abroad.
“Many foreign students studying in the Philippines are still coming in for the opening of classes. Some of them have come from countries where there are confirmed A(H1N1) cases, thus the rescheduling of the class opening will give them time to self-quarantine,” he said.
Angeles signed a memorandum circular yesterday declaring the postponement of the opening of classes in the tertiary level from June 8 to June 15.
He said other factors contributed to the decision to defer the opening of classes, such as the inclement weather the country is now experiencing.
“The recent spell of heavy rains had already caused the suspension of classes in the elementary and high school levels,” Angeles said.
He said the monsoon rains have caused street flooding and traffic congestion “which are not conducive for both the students and the higher education institutions relative to the opening of the school year.”
He said the deferment could also extend the enrolment period in colleges and universities and allow “financially handicapped” parents to raise enough money to enroll their children.
“The rescheduling will give them ample time to prepare and look for some other resources to enable them to send their children back to school,” he said.
De La Salle University (DLSU) earlier announced the suspension of its classes for one week after three of its students, two of them foreigners, tested positive for the A(H1N1) flu.
The threat also forced other schools and universities to postpone the opening of classes.
The University of Santo Tomas (UST) and the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila announced Friday that they were deferring the opening of classes to June 15.
Far Eastern University (FEU) also announced the postponement of its class opening to June 17, also due to the virus alert.
The University of Asia and the Pacific (UAP) also deferred the opening of its classes from June 10 to June 22.
UAP officials said the activities connected to the university graduation have also been postponed.
Facing the threat
UP-Diliman yesterday announced the opening of classes on June 16.
Cristina Hidalgo, vice president for public affairs of UP-Diliman, said they moved the opening of classes following CHED’s recommendation.
Hidalgo said other UP campuses in Los Baños, Baguio, Visayas and Pampanga would also postpone the opening of classes to June 16.
She added UP-Manila and the UP campus in Mindanao would open classes a day earlier, on June 15.
Hidalgo added UP-Diliman also postponed the freshman assembly, which was supposed to be held yesterday, to welcome incoming freshmen to UP.
The DLSU, on the other hand, issued a statement assuring the public that all efforts are being undertaken to contain the spread of the virus.
“The University is in close contact with the Department of Health and is strictly following all protocols required by the DOH and the World Health Organization (WHO), including full disclosure of all possible contacts of the confirmed cases of the DOH monitoring team for back-tracing purposes,” the DLSU said in a statement.
DLSU officials said they are coordinating their efforts with the DOH to monitor other possible flu cases among students.
“DLSU has prepared extensively for this eventuality ever since the threat of the A(H1N1) virus manifested itself. Before classes began in May, the University has saturated all communication channels with information on preventing the spread of the virus,” the DLSU said.
The school officials said the DLSU campus is now being subjected to a “disinfection process” to ensure the facilities are free from the virus when classes resume on June 15.
The postponement came a day after the DOH confirmed four more cases of A(H1N1), including another DLSU student and a Filipino-American from the US.
The patient, a 17-year-old male, is the third DLSU student to have contracted the virus. First to be reported was a 21-year-old female Japanese student, followed by a 20-year-old male Japanese student.
The Catholic Church has also implemented measures on minimizing physical contact among the faithful amid the influenza scare.
The Archdiocese of Manila, for instance, had ordered parish priests and the Catholic faithful to limit physical contact during Mass.
Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales ordered the priests belonging to the Archdiocese to observe the new instructions.
“We are telling them (priests) not to give communion in the mouth because… the saliva of the parishioner touches the hand of the priest. If a person is infected with the influenza virus, it could be transferred to the next person lined up in communion. That is why many of the priests wash their hands after communion,” Rosales said.
“It is not only in the Philippines, there are other countries as well,” he said, citing Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country where the A(H1N1) virus supposedly originated.
Not a notch higher
The WHO, on the other hand, kept its pandemic flu alert at the second highest level since Friday but said that future changes would reflect how severe an outbreak was as well as how widespread.
The UN agency has been weighing how to revamp its pandemic alert scale to reflect both the severity of the flu as well as its geographic spread around the world.
This follows criticism that it may have caused undue panic about the new strain whose effects have been mainly mild apart from in Mexico, where it is known to have killed 103 people.
“There was a broad consensus on the importance of including information on severity in future announcements,” said a statement issued after flu experts held hour-long talks.
The experts, meeting as WHO’s emergency committee, made recommendations on a number of factors to be taken into account to assess the severity of an epidemic, it said, without giving details.
WHO’s top flu expert Keiji Fukuda said this week that one idea was to add three severity notches to the highest marker of 6, so the overall level can reach the peak even if the flu’s effects remain moderate, and then be adjusted again later if the virus causes more serious health problems.
The experts also maintained their advice against closing borders or restricting international travel to try to halt the continued spread of the A(H1N1) virus, measures deemed ineffective.
Production of seasonal influenza vaccines should also continue for now, as work proceeds on developing a vaccine against the new strain, widely known as swine flu, it said.
The meeting, convened at the request of WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, did not consider crossing the threshold to the highest phase 6, according to WHO officials. That issue had not been on the formal agenda.
WHO’s pandemic scale remains at the second-highest level, phase 5 on a scale of 1 to 6, meaning a pandemic is imminent.
Before Friday’s changes, the WHO would have had to confirm sustained spread of the virus in one country in another region besides North America to declare a full-blown pandemic, although officials had made it clear they were already looking at how severe the epidemic was before going to the top level.
Earlier, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said, “The director-general will use the occasion to ask the emergency committee members – the ‘flu gurus’ around the world – how and if we should have some sort of severity index within phase 6.”
The experts discussed the latest findings about the virus and reviewed measures under WHO’s International Health Regulations, which require countries to report promptly on outbreaks and intensify their surveillance for unusual signs.
The new strain has infected 21,940 people in 69 countries, killing 125 of them, according to the WHO. Mexico, the United States and Canada have borne the brunt of the illness and a case was confirmed in Saudi Arabia for the first time.
Fukuda, the WHO’s acting assistant director-general, said on Tuesday that the virus’ spread in Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan, and Spain had nudged the world closer to a pandemic.
The Philippines has confirmed 33 cases of the flu infection.
Even abroad, some Filipinos were reported to have been infected.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said a Filipino nurse in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has tested positive for Influenza A(H1N1) strain.
The DFA quoted the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh in saying that the Filipino nurse is currently confined at the same hospital in Riyadh where she is employed.
The Filipino nurse arrived in the Saudi capital last May 29 from Manila via Bahrain, the DFA said.
Officials said they have notified the DOH’s National Epidemiology Center to trace the Filipino nurse’s movements or the places she went to, along with other people she met within the country before returning to Riyadh. – With Evelyn Macairan, Pia Lee-Brago