ko oo At least 7,000 children aged five to 11 years old were inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines during the initial launch for pediatric vaccination on Monday,

National Task Force (NTF) COVID-19 Chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said a total of 7,416 kids were vaccinated as of 4 pm on Monday.

“As of 4 o’clock, we have 7,416 during our launch. We were expecting much lower but we saw that it reached 7,416. So if it is raised to 10,000, we will become successful,” he said during Talk to The People on Monday night.

Galvez said despite the noise of the “anti-vaxxers” there was overwhelming support from different medical associations, particularly the Philippine Pediatric Association, the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society of the Philippines, the Philippine Medical Association, the private sector, and the US Embassy, WHO and UNICEF that participated in the opening ceremony.

“We started the launch this Monday and we will continue our mini-rollout until February 9. So we will expand to all regions by February 14,” he said.

“Our concept is, we will start small but we will efficiently manage and closely supervised, and most of our pediatric society and the Philippine Medical Association are also supervising and what we will do is the phased and sequential in order to ensure the safety and successful implementation like what we did for the 12 to 17 years old,” he added. Robina Asido/DMS