THE COMMISSION on Higher Education said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases will discuss the possibility of including students in the Covid19 vaccine priority list.

CHED Chairman Prospero De Vera III said that other countries are reviewing their policies and thinking of giving priority to students to enable them to attend face-to-face classes.

“Kung magbabakuna ba ng estudyante at mga bata, this is going to be discussed by the IATF this week because there are countries in other parts of the world that are changing their policy or reviewing their policy,” De Vera said.

Authorities, he added, have to consider the pandemic’s impact on students’ mental health.

“They are observing in other countries that the mental health of students is really getting affected and they’d like the students to be going out of their homes more frequently. And the answer in other countries is to vaccinate them,” the CHED chief said.

Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the government’s campaign against Covid19, earlier assured that the government will expand its vaccination drive to include children and youth aged 17 years old and below.

Education frontliners including teachers have also been given vaccine priority and were upgraded from B1 to the A4 category.