DAVAO CTIY —-President Rodrigo Duterte ordered on Saturday the Department of Education (DepEd) to cancel the planned face-to-face classes in areas deemed low risk for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in January 2021 with the impending threat of the new variant of Covid-19.
“I am cancelling the order I gave a few days ago, a few weeks ago to Secretary (Leonor) Briones of the Education Department [… ]I ask Sec. Briones to suspend everything, all activities of children especially the face-to-face classes,” Duterte said.
“I cannot take the risk of allowing the children. That would be a disaster actually,” Duterte said in his opening statement during an emergency meeting of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
Duterte ordered the suspension of the face-to-face classes amid the reported increase in the number of cases relative to the new Covid-19 strain in the United Kingdom.
There are also reported cases of the Covid-19 variant in such countries as Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Gibraltar, and the Netherlands.
Dr. Richard Lessells, a senior researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said “it is highly unlikely patients will experience different symptoms to the original Covid strain”.
First Minister Mark Drakeford of Welsh, meanwhile, said on Monday that there were more than 600 cases of the new variant in Wales.
Drakeford added it’s “almost certainly a significant underestimation”.
As a preventive measure, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III suggested that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) from the United Kingdom should not be allowed meantime to return to the country.
During the emergency in Malacañang on Saturday, he signified he would not approve of preventing the OFWs from coming home but that he would not also like that the Filipinos to be infected by the disease.
Duterte earlier approved the proposal of the DepEd to conduct the dry run of face-to-face classes starting January 2021 in selected areas.
Briones gave her assurance that she will implement the order of President Duterte. – Newsline.ph
