The government has started the registration for the COVID-19 vaccination of minors aged 12 to 17, National Task Force (NTF) against COVID-19 officials said in an interview on Monday.

Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) against COVID-19, said based on the recommendation of health experts the vaccination of minors may begin after the inoculation of adults is completed.

"We talked with the Philippine Medical Association yesterday and it included the head of the pediatrics society. Their recommendation is to prioritize the 18 above population and after that we can proceed with the 17 and below, or the 12 to 17 (years old)," he said.

''We are looking forward to the conduct of ongoing registration because part of the 70-80 percent are children. Our 18 and above population is around 70 million and if we want to upgrade what we call the scale of herd immunity to 80 (percent)-90 (percent), we need to vaccine more or less 20 million of adolescent and pediatric," he added.

Manila began pre-registering the 12-17 year old segment of the population while Pateros will start pre-registration soon.

This came after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously approved the use of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for those aged below 18 years old.

Galvez said when the vaccination of minors starts, the government will prioritize the dependents of the medical health workers and children with comorbidities.

"We will start with the dependents of A1 or the healthcare workers. Second are those who have comorbidities, we will prioritize them. then definitely we will start with the 12-17 years old,'' he said.

"Our health experts said that the mortality in children is still small, in terms of children mortality," Galvez added. Robina Asido/DMS