MANILA - Majority of children experienced minor injection site pain after being vaccinated against COVID-19 during the first day of its rollout at the National Children's Hospital in Quezon City, its chief said Tuesday.

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Some 237 children ages 5 to 11 were inoculated Monday at the hospital, which allows both pre-registration and walk-in, according to its medical center chief Dr. Moriel Creencia.

All children stayed in the post-vaccination area for 15 minutes for monitoring and 30 minutes if they had history of allergy, Creencia said.

"So far nobody developed fever, just some minor pain over the area of their vaccination site," she told ANC's Headstart.

"I think the success of our vaccination is we're really praying that no child will develop any reaction or negative effect of this vaccination."

The hospital is targeting to vaccinate daily 300 children of said age group as it so far has 2,800 already pre-registered for inoculation, Creencia said.

"As early as 6:30 am we have parents and children queuing. Children were more excited than parents to have themselves vaccinated," she said.

There is a need to immunize children against the coronavirus as the number of them getting infected increased in the first and last quarter of 2021, Creencia said.

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"Before, during the start of the pandemic we never had (pediatric) patients who were COVID positive. We had but very rare," she said.

"We have also to realize or it must be emphasized to the parents that children need to interact less with gadgets and more people we can only do this if we vaccinate our children...Children would say I want to be vaccinated because I want to go back to school, to go out."

The Department of Health has yet to release a report on the number of children ages 5 to 11 who have received a COVID-19 jab. It earlier said some 6.28 million children ages 12 to 17 have been fully vaccinated as of Jan. 23.

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