Says any face-to-face activity for schoolchildren also suspended
(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte recalled his previous order for a pilot testing of face-to-face classes all over the country because of the emergence of the new COVID-19 virus variant from the United Kingdom that is more infectious than previous strains.
“Prudence tells us that we should confront this emerging infectious disease,” Duterte said in a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) on Saturday night, Dec. 26, in Malacanang.
He then directed Education Secretary Leonor Briones not to push through with the pilot testing for face to face classes of school children nationwide. The pilot testing was supposed to start in January next year.
Duterte said that he cannot allow any school activity where face-to-face interactions would be allowed involving school children.
“Yung order ko noon kay Secretary Briones, I’m calling back the order and I will not allow face-to-face classes of children until we are through with this,” Duterte said.
“We have to know the nature of the germs we are confronting,” he stressed.
Before the IATF meeting ended, DepEd Secretary Briones sent a message thru Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque affirming that there would be no more face-to-face classes in the entire country in compliance with the President’s directive.
Briones early this month had recommended to the President the pilot testing of face-to-face classes starting January 2021 of select schools in areas where there is a low or even zero incidence of COVID-19 cases. It would only be on a voluntary basis, provided that both parents and the students agree to such an arrangement.
-Averting a disaster-
“Wala pa tayong alam. I cannot take the risk of allowing the children. That will be a disaster, actually,” President Duterte said.
Duterte said he is cancelling the order he gave to Secretary Briones and the Department of Education a few weeks ago.
He said he is suspending all activities of children that will require face-to-face activities, “especially face to face classes.”
The President, during the IATF meeting, called on the health experts and scientists to enlighten the public about the new more infectious COVID-19 strain that was discovered in the UK which has since spread in other countries.
Duterte has also ordered the control of the country’s borders so that the new more infectious virus strain would not enter the country.
The UK virus variant has not yet been observed in the Philippines, according to the Philippine Genome Center as of December 22.
But the monitoring, checking and analysis of COVID virus strains, mutations, sequences or variants in the country is still ongoing as all are on the alert against this new UK variant.
The new UK COVID-19 virus strain called variant B.1.1.7 is said to be up to 70 percent more infectious than the earlier SARS-CoV-2 strains.
(Eagle News Service)
