MANILA, Philippines - The government has included vocational school students in the random drug testing it has been conducting across the country, a Department of Education (DepEd) official said on Sunday

Education Assistant Secretary Thelma Santos said random drug tests, which resumed with the opening of classes in June, would be conducted at vocational schools accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

“If before our teams focused on high schools before testing students in college or the vocational schools, now we’re doing the testing in all of them at the same time,” Santos said in an interview.

The DepEd and Department of Health (DOH) are about to wrap up random drug testing in the National Capital Region.

“We’re almost through with Metro Manila and have only 199 schools still to be tested in Quezon City. We’ll be doing that in the next seven days,” Santos said.

“We’ve finished in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, Butuan, Agusan del Norte and parts of Cebu. In a few weeks we’ll be in Olongapo and other nearby cities in Luzon,” she said.

She said some students tested positive for drug use in initial tests recently.

“DOH officials said there were some positive cases during the screening but these will still have to be confirmed,” she said.

Before testing was suspended for the summer, nine students were confirmed positive for illegal drug use.