The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) will discuss the possibility of including students in the vaccination priority list against COVID-19.
CHED Chairman Prospero de Vera III said the IATF-EID may release a decision on the matter this week following their discussion. In a press briefing on Tuesday (May 18), he said there are various countries that “change their policy” on vaccination and are “thinking of prioritizing vaccinating students” so they can attend limited face-to-face classes.
He also claimed that other countries are “observing” the students’ mental health since they were affected by the implemented lockdowns.
“They’d like the students to be going out of their homes more frequently, and the answer in other countries is to vaccinate them. So that will be discussed in the IATF whether that is a policy that we could also have in the Philippines,” he said.
Meanwhile, De Vera announced that the skeletal workforce of the higher education sector was moved from the B1 category to A4 in the vaccine prioritization listing.
“We fought to further upgrade the skeletal workforce of the higher education sector from B1 to A4. Our argument was that you needed to vaccinate the workforce of HEIs [higher education institutions] because by July the students would have graduated and the students need their diplomas and transcript of records.”
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said the vaccination of individuals in the A4 and A5 categories is expected to roll out in June as greater volumes of vaccines arrive in the Philippines.
(PTV News)/NGS-jlo
