MANILA, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Ironman, Captain America, puppeteers and stilt performers entertained children at a vaccination center in the Philippines on Monday, part of a campaign to boost its COVID-19 inoculation campaign. 19 among its youngest citizens.

Artists made swords and models from balloons as “superheroes” posing for photos with children aged 5 to 11 after receiving their snaps in the capital Manila.

The Philippines has vaccinated about half of its 110 million people, but many areas outside of urban centers are still far behind, complicating efforts to suppress new outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.

Children have been particularly affected by lockdown measures in the Philippines, which have kept schools closed for nearly two years and forced young people to stay indoors under some of the toughest lockdown rules in the world.

“He’s been home for two years so he has to go out and meet his friends, his classmates,” Marissa Say said after her son received a shot.

“Once he’s finished all the doses, we can at least feel safe and relaxed and he can go back to his normal life.”

The Philippines is seeking to inoculate a total of 15 million children, but vaccine hesitancy that predates the pandemic has complicated the campaign. Other methods of encouraging the vaccination of children have been to administer them in a zoo.

There have been 3.6 million cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines so far, including 54,000 deaths. The Omicron variant spurred a record number of cases for several days last month.

Mother Bernadette Cruz said vaccinating children will help the country keep going.

“It’s very important for me to get my child vaccinated because it will help to have herd immunity in our country and it will help our current pandemic become endemic much faster,” she said.

Reporting by Adrian Portugal, writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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