DOH to set up COVID-19 vaccination sites in schools

The Department of Health will set up COVID-19 vaccination sites in schools to encourage inoculation, DOH officer-in-charge and Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Friday.

“We are going to set up vaccination sites in schools… to further encourage not just children but also their mothers when they go to school and they bring their children there,” Vergeire said in an interview on ANC.

“They are there already and they might be more encouraged because ‘yung access po ay binigay na natin sa kanila. Even teachers and those non-teaching personnel that has not been vaccinated yet baka mas ma-encourage natin,” she added.

(They are there already and they might be more encouraged because they now have access to the vaccine. We may even encourage teachers and those non-teaching personnel that has not been vaccinated.)

Vergeire, however, stressed that vaccination should not be a prerequisite for attending face-to-face classes as this may lead to disenfranchisement.

She issued the remark when asked if she would be open to mandating students to get vaccinated.

“Well, definitely, the vaccines or the vaccination should not be a prerequisite to going to school. This would disenfranchise other children whose parents would really not allow their children to have themselves vaccinated,” she said.

The Health undersecretary said that “education is a right.”

“What we need to do is we need to incentivize and also we need to encourage our mothers, our guardians, that their children get vaccinated. And what we need to do as the government would be to ensure that there is this safe environment for our children when they get back to school,” she said.

Meanwhile, Vergeire said she wanted to be remembered as someone who upheld her integrity, commitment, and compassion after being designated as officer-in-charge of the DOH by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“‘Yung compassion and maiparamdam natin doon sa ating mga binibigyan ng serbisyo na importante sila lahat sa atin,” she said.

“Another thing that I would like to be remembered for would be that I have continued on with the different achievements of the Department, especially during this time of the pandemic and that I have been inclusive, consulting all sectors and, of course, consulting my colleagues,” she added.

Vergeire said she also wants to be remembered for being able to protect the Filipino population “by moving forward and doing all of these responses” to the coronavirus pandemic.—AOL, GMA News