Limited Physical Classes in Medicine Will Push Through This Year

With the approval of President Rodrigo Duterte, the small physical classes for students in medical and health-allied programs are expected to resume.

Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, in-person studying for colleges just like the rest of the nation has been called off for almost a year already, with schools taking their courses online that had sometimes spelled trouble for many.

The presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a monthly briefing that the preparation of young doctors and medical professionals would proceed amid the health crisis.

Scant specifics have been given so far without any official statement by the commission yet. But on Tuesday afternoon, De Vera said it took 5 months to come up with the recommendations and was reviewed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea’s office.

The final recommendations that CHED would soon release include specifics of the Office of the Preisdent’s approval, such as the courses protected. The CHED chairman also claimed in the study that the advisory includes areas under updated general population quarantine, as well as students in GCQ areas where their institutions have a designated hospital with COVID-19 status.

Much of the nation is now under MGQC, while GCQ remains under Metro Manila and nine other districts. The University of the Philippines in Manila, Our Lady of Fatima in Valenzuela, and Ateneo de Manila in Quezon City were among the universities named De Vera that were accepted for physical classes.

The acceptance comes months after the recognition of the face-to-face medical internship at UP Manila’s Philippine General Hospital by the coronavirus task force in October 2020 .Three interns and a clerk have so far contracted COVID-19 from there, according to the dean of UP Medicine, noting that transmission in societies is more likely than in hospitals.

Morever, the prospect of providing in-person classrooms for others, including those in K-12, is uncertain, as this is the case for students in those programs.This January, after the approval of the Duterte Cabinet, the education department was scheduled to perform a pilot run on face-to-face learning in classrooms, only to be rescinded by the president due to the danger of the latest coronavirus.