CORONAVIRUS: we can’t risk  schools resumption without vaccine- Presidency

By Ezurike Ugochukwu

The risk of allowing children return to classes without availability of vaccine for coronavirus is too great a risk to take says the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

As Philippine is working hard to build its way out of coronavirus downturn with 14,319 confirmed coronavirus cases and 873 deaths, according to the Department of Health.

the President stated on monday during a televised address to the nation that allowing students back to school without a vaccine administered spells disaster.

Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte

Even as some countries resume in-person classes, the  president has insisted on availability of vaccine first, he said,  “I will not allow the opening of classes where students will be near each other, unless I am sure that they are really safe, it’s useless to be talking about opening of classes.”

“For me, vaccine first. If the vaccine is already there, then it’s okay, if no one graduates, then so be it,” he said.

The president insisted that the safety of the children was more important than going to school, stressing that even if it held students back academically so be it.

There has not been any approved vaccine for the  highly infectious novel respiratory disease. However, researchers across the world have launched a round the clock effort to quickly develop one.

In a message to Al Jazeera,  an infectious diseases expert Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security said the coronavirus has not disappeared despite social distancing and will continue to spread until there is a vaccine.

The novel virus has kept school children around the globe home for months, but in-person classes(classroom based learning) have begun to resume in such countries as France.

The Philippine Department of Education had stated that their plan for school opening was not necessarily classroom traditional face-to-face learning.

It announced a mix of distance-learning measures, including online classes, that would be used for the coming school year, but the greatest challenge is that millions in the country do not have access to computers at home.

The  education department therefore stated that physical opening of schools will depend on the risk severity grading or classification of a locality.