THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers  urged the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to include teachers in the vaccination priority list saying that teachers are frontliners since they deliver “essential service of education amid the pandemic.”

The group sent a formal request to the IATF, pointing out that teachers are vulnerable to Covid19 infection as they perform their duties. This vulnerability, it added, threatens education continuity in the country.

ACT explained that teachers are at a high risk of getting infected because they “report to schools and visit communities to distribute modules and facilitate other government programs, such as the Department of Health’s deworming project.”

“We are alarmed by the increasing number of teachers infected every day as they perform their sworn service to our learners. Without enough protection from the government, not only are their lives put on the line but also is the future of education,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said.

Basilio said that the number of Department of Education personnel who contracted the disease rose by 452 percent from August to October 2020.

This, he said, is proof of teachers’ high level of vulnerability to infection.

“It is a blow to our teachers’ morale that the Duterte government overlooks the value of their work as the country grapples with the pandemic, not to mention the immense hardships and risks that they bear under the ill-prepared distance learning,” Basilio said.