DURING a recent Senate hearing for the Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture, Department of Education undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said COVID-19 vaccination will not be a “matter of choice” for teachers if it would be part of the protocol for the proposed face-to-face classes.
If he was joking, nobody’s laughing.
Getting a vaccine is a matter of choice, even for teachers. They have the right to make treatment of choice even if it is a requisite for the return to face-to-face classes.
Getting any kind of vaccine or any kind of medical procedure should be a matter of choice for everyone. The Department of Education should be cautioned against saying teachers might not get a choice when it comes to getting vaccinated against COVID-19. It – and the Duterte administration – should instead ensure that teachers would get higher priority in the vaccination plan, and make sure that what they would offer to teachers is a free, efficacious and safe vaccine. This would let our teachers gain trust in the vaccines.
It is very alarming to note that there is poor public confidence in the national government’s vaccination plan, especially its priority in a vaccine with the lowest efficacy rate. It is the government’s responsibility and mandate to provide the people the safest and most cost-efficient vaccine. With COVID-19 vaccines starting to be made available, this administration must ensure that those who need it will be able to get it.
Government should be able to secure enough vaccines to be able to vaccinate all those who need it, including education frontliners. But giving priority to vaccinate education frontliners should not remove their right to choose which vaccine they will opt to get if they choose to be vaccinated.
Some quarters even argue that having vaccines should not be a prerequisite for having face-to-face classes. They cite studies and recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States, UNICEF and proposals from the Philippine Pediatric Society on how to safely reopen schools to conduct face-to-face classes amid the pandemic and even without the vaccine.
The Department of Education should not settle for a haphazard, unsafe and burdensome implementation of face-to-face classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
