Cebu City, Philippines—All 478 delegates of Central Visayas in the recent National Schools Press Conference (NSPC) and National Festival of Talents (NFOT) of the Department of Education (DepEd) are currently considered as persons under monitoring (PUM) and are being subjected to home quarantine for almost two weeks already due to risk of being infected by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Amaryllis Villarmia, information officer of the DepEd in Central Visayas (DepEd-7), said they were home quarantined since the day they arrived in their respective provinces.
The delegates consists of students, teachers, and coaches. A total of 108 represented Central Visayas in the NFOT that was held in Ilagan City, Isabela while 370 represented the region in the NSPC that was held in Tuguegarao City, Cagayan Valley.
The activities for the NSPC and NFOT started March 9, 2020 and ended on March 13, 2020.
Read more: 478 CV delegates in two DepEd events
The NSPC and NFOT are the only events that were permitted by DepEd to be pursued amid the threat of the COVID-19.
Read more: DepEd cancels all extracurricular events except for 2
“They were home quarantined due to the executive orders issued by the different LGUs (Local Government Unit) and because of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Luzon,” Villarmia said.
The NFOT events included the Technolympics for Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Education, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and Entrepreneurship; Sining Tanghalan, Nationwide Song Writing and Choral Group, National Pambansang Tagisan ng Talento sa Filipino; and Special Program in the Foreign Language (Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Arabic, Braille and sign languages).
Meanwhile, NSPC delegates competed in group categories, which consist of radio and TV scriptwriting and broadcasting, collaborative desktop publishing, and online publishing.
Dubbed as the “Olympics of campus journalism,” NSPC is organized annually by DepEd in pursuant to Republic Act 7079 or the Campus Journalism Act of 1991.
Villarmia added that all delegates are being monitored and none of them has manifested any signs or symptoms of the COVID-19. /bmjo