The biggest challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic management is the return of children to full face-to-face classes on November, OCTA Research Fellow Nicanor Austriaco said Tuesday.

In the Pandesal Forum, Austriaco said the 30 to 35 million children who will soon be attending classes are mostly unvaccinated.

“The biggest challenge of the pandemic management is the return of face-to-face classes of children. Now I want you to keep in mind that in terms of pandemic management, these 30 to 35 million human beings who were previously restrained from interacting with people,” Austriaco said.

“And now there’s the increased mobility for 30 to 35 million of our children, many of whom remain unvaccinated,” he added.

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte ordered private and public schools to transition from online classes to face-to-face classes starting November 2.

Austriaco urged parents to vaccinate their children and to get their booster shots to provide them a “wall of immunity” as they get more exposed to the virus as they travel to school.

As of July 2, a total of 154,129,333 COVID-19 vaccines have been administered. Of this 70, 695,502 people had completed their primary doses while 15,098,295 have received a booster dose. Jaspearl Tan/DMS