Vaccination campaign for minors ‘successful’

MANILA: A ranking health department official on Saturday described as “successful” the start of the government campaign to administer coronavirus (COVID-19) jabs to Filipino minors, aged 12 to 17, and expand the country’s inoculation programme to yet another vulnerable sector in its population.

“The start of our vaccination for our pediatric population was successful,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told a televised media forum. “There was no report of untoward adverse reaction on any of the vaccinated children.”

Vergeire said a total of 1,151 minors with comorbidities (ailments like diabetes and asthma) received their first dose of COVID-19 shots from eight hospitals in Metro Manila. She added that only two vaccines were used in the pilot programme — Pfizer and Moderna earlier granted emergency use utilization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration.

Vergeire admited there was no registry for children with comorbidities but estimates are they number about 800,000 nationwide.

“What we did,” she told a TV interview, “was to do estimation and we have the number of children who need to be vaccinated.”

But the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that minors aged 12 to 17 totalled 12.7 million of whom 10 per cent or 1.2 million have comorbidities.

Vergeire also assured that the inclusion of the minors with comorbidities would not affect especially the “unvaccinated adults.”

As she put it, the minors were included in the list of adults with comorbidities as well as senior citizens, 60 years old and above, who are to be given top priority in the nationwide vaccination campaign which the government rolled out on March 1. In a separate interview, Dr Gloria Balboa, the health department regional director said they would expanded the programme for minors in the 15 cities and one town that compose Metro Manila with a total population of more than 13 million.