BAGUIO CITY – The Department of Education-Baguio reported that more than 97 percent of the agency’s non-teaching and teaching personnel are already fully vaccinated to ensure their readiness for the implementation of the limited face-to-face classes in the city.
Dr. Mary Libeney Sito, medical officer of the DepEd-City Schools Division said the remaining 3 percent of the 2,449 teaching and non-teaching personnel of the education department in the city are unvaccinated because of their religious belief and other valid reasons.
Sito said there is no discrimination among non-vaccinated personnel in the agency because they respect the disposition of those teaching and no-teaching employees who do not want to be vaccinated but they have to comply with the prescribed guidelines for them to show their negative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or antigen test every 14 days.
The vaccination of non-teaching and teaching personnel is one of the major requirements for schools to be allowed to resume limited face-to-face classes, aside from the ongoing advocacy of the agency for children aged 5 to 11 to be vaccinated for them to get added protection against severe infection from the Covid-19.
Sito said that barangays play a key role in helping the different public elementary and high schools in the resumption of limited face-to-face classes following the downgrading of the city’s status to alert Level 1 which eases up the previous quarantine restrictions.
One of the major requirements of schools to be allowed the resumption of limited f2f classes is that the barangays hosting the said schools must have no Covid cases over the past 28 days.
The education department and the City Health services Office (CHSO) are now validating the compliance of the different schools that are allowed to resume limited face-to-face classes for their compliance to existing health and safety protocols.