The Department of Education (DepEd) hosted experts on the field to discuss the government’s vaccination program and emerging developments about the virus as part of the assistance in delivering accurate and relevant information related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic response.
DepEd briefed stakeholders on the vaccination program as well as the new COVID-19 variants through a webinar. Dr. Beverly Lorraine Ho and Dr. Althea de Guzman from the Department of Health (DOH) with alongside Professor Nina Gloriani of the UP-Manila College of Public Health graced the DepEd-led webinar for education stakeholders.
Undersecretary for Planning Service, Human Resource and Organizational Development Jesse L.R. Mateo noted that the webinar helped in enlightening the DepEd community’s role, which includes the teachers, parents, and personnel in the vaccination program.
“While we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel with the development of several vaccines alongside the government's effort for the country's vaccination program, we cannot let our guards down,” Mateo said. “Hence, it is more critical to improve public awareness and preparedness,” he added.
Likewise, Mateo encouraged everyone to share important information from the webinar to other people to make it easier to understand the government’s existing interventions.
“My suggestion and appeal is that for us to share this knowledge with our family members. Who knows, our family members will also share it with their peers, with their colleagues, with their friends,” Mateo said.
Mateo also reiterated DepEd’s commitment to support government's effort to promote information dissemination about the vaccine as well as about the new variants.
During the webinar, Ho discussed the government’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program and its process and benefactors, among others. “What we would like to emphasize here is that, as much as we always want Science to be precise, to be very exact, Science is also evolving and this is why as we are learning more about the vaccines, we will also let you know about them,” she added.
Guzman imparted necessary information on how the new COVID-19 variants are transmitted and what could be the added risk of it. Gloriani, on the other hand, shared the effects of the COVID-19 vaccines to the people as part of our current response.
The said webinar was organized by the DepEd-Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service (DRRMS) as an aid to the government’s information drive for the COVID-19 vaccination program.
“The webinar aims to enhance DepEd's response efforts to the COVID-19 pandemic by upgrading our skills and also our knowledge on the virus and its emerging variants and provide information on the government's program and response effort,” DepEd added.