The Department of Transportation on Friday said it will ramp up public transport capacity as it expects commuters to increase by 15 percent with the opening of face-to-face classes by August 22.
This as a group of private schools said it would appeal to Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio to “give leeway” to them following her order of 100 percent in-person classes in November.
“Our schools were affected by Odette so we have to renovate, we don’t have enough classroom to prepare for face-to-face classes, especially in the Visayas…This is not to disagree, because that’s already an order, but on behalf of member-schools of FAPSA we’re appealing to have a leeway on behalf of the private schools,” said Leo Aberion, spokesperson of the Federation of Associations of Private Schools & Administrators (FAPSA).
Duterte-Carpio earlier issued DepEd Order No. 34, which mandates public and private basic education schools to shift to five days of in-person classes per week starting November 2.
Transportation Undersecretary for Road and Transport Infrastructure Mark Steven Pastor, for his part, said the agency expects a 15 percent increase in the number of passengers due to the start of face-to-face classes next month.
“Our available transportation is sufficient provided that operators deploy 90 percent of their PUV units,” he said.
At present, public utility buses operate at 80 to 90 percent capacity, while the public utility jeepneys operate at a lower capacity due to high oil prices.
Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista said inter-agency cooperation will be vital to provide students ample transportation means while also ensuring their safety amid the threat of COVID-19.
As classes reopen next month, Department of Health officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said she wants vaccination sites in schools to ramp up the government’s COVID-19 prevention program.
“Definitely the vaccine should not be a prerequisite to going to school. This would disenfranchise other children whose parents will not allow them to get the vaccine,” she said in a television interview Friday.
“What we need to do is to incentivize and encourage mothers, parents, guardians and for the government to ensure there’s this safe environment for children when they get the vaccine,” she added.
She earlier said vaccination sites would also be placed in workplaces, places of worship, and public markets.
Vergeire said the DOH also wants to vaccinate 90 percent of the country’s senior citizens within the first 100 days of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration.
“We were given these marching orders to vaccinate at least 90 percent of all senior citizens across the country,” she said.
As of July 12, some 71 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. However, only 15.3 million have availed of booster doses.
The government’s renewed push to ramp up vaccination came as the World Health Organization warned it expects to see “repeated waves of infection” as more COVID-19 subvariants become more virulent and resilient to vaccines.
“We do see BA.5 has a growth advantage which has to do with transmissibility and immune escape. So it’s transmitting more efficiently, it’s the most transmissible variant we’ve seen of SARS-COV-2. But I do want to warn people out there that the next variant I talk about will be more transmissible than the last because it has to outcompete whatever is circulating,” WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said.
In the National Capital Region here in the Philippines, the weekly COVID-19 positivity rate increased to 13 percent while the national rate stood at 10 percent, the DOH said.
Positivity rate refers to the percentage of people who were found positive for COVID-19 among the total number of individuals tested.
“Most areas show a sharp increase in cases with NCR showing the steepest increase, now almost at 750 cases per day,” the DOH said in its latest report.
For his part, President Marcos ended his isolation Friday after recovering from his second bout against COVID-19, Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles said.
“He is okay as of his doctor’s findings. He has ended his isolation,” she said.
Marcos, who first contracted the disease in March 2020 after a trip from Spain, tested positive again in an antigen test on July 8.