Teachers should be vaccinated before F2F classes – Marcos

MANILA, Philippines — Holding face-to-face classes may be a good sign that the country is slowly recovering from the pandemic, but the Department of Education (DepEd) should make sure teachers must be vaccinated first.

Former senator Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. has suggested that DepEd refrain from proceeding with its proposed policy of not making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for the teaching and non-teaching personnel of schools that would participate in the pilot-testing of face-to-face classes.

“I think there is a need to take a second look at that policy. Simply because in other countries, their experiences was that there were risks involved in having non-vaccinated teachers and staff when they went back to face-to-face classes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that at least we are trying to start face-to-face classes. It is actually good news because that is a very good sign that, somehow, we are slowly going back to normalcy,” he said.

Marcos also noted that unlike last year, when children and teenagers were not so vulnerable to the previous strains of the virus, the emergence of the highly infectious Delta variant has affected thousands of children in the age range four and below to 19.

According to data from the DOH, there were 38,825 COVID cases among children aged four years old and below; 40,286 among children between five and nine years old; 54,847 among children who are 10 to 14 years old and 82,434 among teenagers between 15 and 19 years old.

The former lawmaker pointed out that with children below 18 still not included in the national vaccination program’s priority tiers, they will be even more vulnerable to infection, possibly coming from unvaccinated teachers and non-teaching personnel in schools.

He said last year’s medical findings that young people have greater resistance to COVID-19 no longer applies, as thousands of teenagers and even infants have ended up infected.

“That’s why teachers, I believe, should be vaccinated because they are exposed to so many people and then they are exposed to children, students, young people who are not yet vaccinated,” he said.

Reiterating his earlier call to include teachers and the DepEd’s non-teaching personnel in the list of priorities for vaccination, Marcos proposed allocating a portion of the vaccines that are expected to be delivered in several batches by the end of October for the vaccination of teachers.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. earlier disclosed that around 41.5 million doses of vaccines are expected to arrive in the remaining week of September and in October, which would allow the country to have a total vaccine supply count of 100 million.