Kids vaccine rate remains low despite rampant spread of Omicron variant
Posted January 24, 2022 4:32 pm.
Last Updated January 24, 2022 10:58 pm.
One member of the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force says the timing of the Omicron outbreak in Canada may have hurt the uptake of pediatric vaccines, just when kids need them most.
Child-sized doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine were approved for children aged five to 11 on Nov. 19, 2021, and many provinces began injections the following week.
Vaccine hesitancy expert Kate Allen warned early on that parents would be slower to vaccinate their five to 11-year-olds than they were to vaccinate themselves or even their older kids since parents tend to be more cautious when it comes to young children.
But the vaccine rate is even lower than she expected, even though evidence about the safety of the shot for kids has been positive.
In the two months since they were approved, only 51 per cent of children in that age group have had at least one dose.
That’s compared to more than 72 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds who got at least one jab two months after most provinces began to offer them.
“I think the impression probably that the public health community had was that there’d be a little bit quicker uptake than there has been,” said Allen, a post-doctoral research fellow at Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases at the University of Toronto.
Ontario COVID-19 vaccination data (Jan. 24, 2022)
One reason could be that provinces started offering pediatric doses of the vaccine just as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 began to spread.
The highly transmissible and relatively less severe variant has now ripped through Canadian communities, sparking a major shift toward offering booster shots to protect adults and older populations.
“I think there was a real focus on that, and so that may have sort of taken away a little bit of attention from sort of five-to-11-year-old population,” Allen said.
That may now be changing.
Last week Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that the vaccine rate among children was too low, and chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam also expressed concerns.
“We need to do what’s right,” Trudeau said at a press briefing last week. “That means getting our kids vaccinated.”
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam also expressed concerns last week and suggested the government needs to probe why more parents aren’t choosing to vaccinate their kids.
Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization has already recommended that moderately or severely immunocompromised people receive a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine, at least six months after their third shot.
Pediatrician Dr. Jim Kellner, who sits on the COVID-19 Immunity Taskforce, says many governments have focused on improving access to booster doses for adults in the face of Omicron, rather than on promoting vaccines for kids.
He says the highly transmissible Omicron variant has also changed the public’s perception of the threat COVID-19 poses, even though many jurisdictions are seeing more children hospitalized with the virus.
Many parents are under the impression that contracting Omicron is unavoidable, that a vaccine will no longer prevent transmission and that, since kids are at a lower risk in the first place, there is little point in putting them through the ordeal of getting a needle.
But Omicron has led to a surge in hospitalizations among younger kids across the country, and vaccines could prevent the worst outcomes, Kellner said.
While young kids account for less than two per cent of COVID-19-related hospitalizations, the total number of people needing care has skyrocketed to 10,588 as of Jan. 17.
That means more and more kids have wound up very sick.
“These kids are sick enough to have to come into hospital,” he said.
While some kids are particularly vulnerable because they have underlying conditions, that’s not the case for all who end up in a hospital bed. Kellner said it’s difficult to predict which ones will be the hardest hit.
Until now, public health officials and politicians have reinforced the message that people must get vaccinated to protect their communities. But Kellner said that focus should change.
“The main reason for a child to be vaccinated is for the parents to protect that child,” he said.
Ontario back-to-school effort roiled by absences
New data out of Ontario shows many of its schools were hit by high rates of absences when in-person classes resumed last week.
More than 300 Ontario schools reported absence rates higher than 30 per cent by the end of last week, which saw planned classroom reopenings disrupted by harsh winter conditions in much of the province.
The numbers don’t indicate the reasons behind the absences nor whether they are related to COVID-19. Ontario is no longer publishing information on cases in schools due to a restricted testing policy, but began sharing data on absences online today.
As of Friday, 337 schools had absent rates of at least 30 per cent, including 111 schools that were more than half empty. That’s based on numbers made available for 3,451 of the province’s 4,844 schools.
The province reported that 16 schools, or 0.3 per cent, were closed as of Friday.
Ontario logged 3,861 hospitalizations related to COVID-19 on Monday, including 615 patients in intensive care.
Health Minister Christine Elliott noted that not all hospitals report weekend data.
