STUDENTS can go back to school and attend physical classes once majority of Filipinos had been vaccinated, Sen. Richard Gordon said on Wednesday.

He said face-to-face classes can resume once 70 percent of the country’s population had been given protection.

“It is important that we make sure that everyone is safe and that our people are protected from the virus before we go back to face-to-face classes. It would be best if we achieve a population or herd immunity first,” Gordon said.

“Through an effective vaccination program, we will be able stop the spread of the virus and break the chain of transmission,” he added.

Gordon cited the experiment conducted in Serrana, a town in Sau Paolo, Brazil, where local cases dropped dramatically after a mass vaccination for Covid19.

After almost every adult in Serrana completed their shots between February and April, symptomatic cases dropped by 80 percent, related hospitalizations fell 86 percent, and deaths plummeted 95 percent.

“I think we can also do that here. We can try to do mass inoculation first in one province. If we see the efficacy of it, then we can continue doing that to other areas, especially the ones with the highest number of cases, until we got everybody vaccinated,” Gordon said.

“Once we achieve full protection from Covid19, that’s the time we can send the students back to school. We can all work again, start to rebuild our economy and live normally once more,” he added.