MANILA, Philippines — Face-to-face classes will be allowed in January 2021 and not earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte clarified Monday.
Last week, the President approved the proposal of the education sector to conduct limited face-to-face classes in areas that are low-risk of the coronavirus transmission.
“I cannot and I will not put at risk the lives of our students and teachers,” Duterte said in his fifth State of the Nation Address.
READ: Face-to-face classes: Children need ‘human interaction’ – DepEd
“About two weeks ago, I seemed to have said that I would allow the face-to-face classes to resume. But we were talking actually of January,” he noted.
READ: LIST: Gov’t rules for ‘limited’ face-to-face classes in COVID-19 ‘low-risk’ areas
The President cited there will be difficulty in getting a hand of a vaccine against COVID-19 since “everyone will go for it.”
“Because my thinking is that, by September we would have the vaccine. How to get it from the producers or from other governments is really something which we have to deal with because everybody, it’s a global need. And everyone will go for it,” he said.