The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) lauded the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) for responding to its call to join the growing list of higher education institutions (HEIs) offering their school facilities as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination centers.

“The Commission lauds UPLB for facilitating the vaccination of its personnel, particularly those in the A1 and A2 priority groups so that they will be assured of protection and continue to provide essential education services,” said CHED Chairman J. Prospero E. De Vera III in a statement issued Wednesday, April 28.

De Vera, who is also UP Board of Regents Chairman, stressed that HEI personnel also need to be prioritized since the current semester is about to end. Given this, “there should be no delay in the processing of the documents of students who will continue their studies or will graduate.”

CHED, De Vera said, successfully lobbied for the upgrading of the skeletal workforce in HEIs from B1 to A4 in the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).

“The inclusion of the UPLB campus as additional vaccination center will also ensure that with the arrival of additional vaccines in the coming months to cover the UPLB skeletal workforce under A4, our education frontliners will be assured of their vaccination and there will be no delay in the processing of the documents of students who will continue their studies or look for work,” he added.

Immediately after CHED and the Union of the Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) released on April 9 its joint statement calling for partnerships for resiliency, rehabilitation, and national recovery in the fight against COVID-19, the UPLB administration met with the local officials of Los Baños and Bay, two host municipalities of the vast UPLB campus, and offered the university’s Copeland Gymnasium as an additional vaccination hub.

“We responded to CHED’s commitment with the ULAP to have the facilities of HEIs as vaccination centers for the country’s expanded immunization program. UPLB, through the guidance of our UP President Danilo Concepcion, was very supportive of the initiative,” UPLB Chancellor Jose V. Camacho, Jr. said in a separate statement.

To date, medical frontliners and senior citizens of the UPLB who respectively belong to the A1 and A2 categories of priority groups for vaccination and are registered residents of the municipalities are getting their first dose of the vaccine inside the campus.

CHED noted that the university also tapped its medical professionals and support staff to assist these LGUs in fast tracking the vaccination of residents.

With the recent start of the vaccination program of Los Baños LGU in the UPLB Vaccination Hub, CHED said that these groups belonging to A1 and A2 categories join the growing number of local residents who have received the “shot of hope.”