(Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

By CJME News

VACCINE

Incoming vaccinations will ‘definitely’ bring child case rates down: Shahab

Oct 25, 2021 | 9:02 AM

Through the pandemic, about a third of cases in Saskatchewan have been in kids and teens, so as cases have gone up in Saskatchewan the last few months, so have cases in kids.

However, those high numbers could change starting next month.

Dr. Saqib Shahab, the province’s chief medical health officer, said the province is expecting to receive vaccines for kids in early or mid-November.

“We need to be ready that as soon as vaccines come, it is made available for children (aged) five to 11,” said Shahab.

“I think all of us with children in that age group should be ready to take the first opportunity to get our children vaccinated.”

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Shahab didn’t have much more in details beyond that, saying more are to come.

Pfizer recently submitted data to Health Canada to get its COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in children aged five to 11.

The physician town hall Thursday night — a meeting meant to provide information and answer questions for doctors in the province — talked about pediatric cases of COVID-19. In a presentation, pediatrician Dr. Mahli Brindamour said during the week of Oct. 17 there were 17 kids in hospital, the most there have been.

Brindamour also explained that while deaths due to COVID-19 are rare in kids, they do happen.

Throughout the country, there have been 18 deaths in children up to the age of 18. In Saskatchewan, three children under 12 have died from COVID-19, which is 16 per cent of all pediatric deaths in Canada.

Shahab said the reason child COVID cases make up a third of those in the province is, in part, because kids either couldn’t or still can’t, be vaccinated. But he said that can be mitigated by everyone around kids being vaccinated.

“If all parents had a 99 per cent vaccination (rate), and school staff (got vaccinated) – and I see no reason why that shouldn’t happen – even in unvaccinated children under 11, our case numbers would go down to maybe 10, 15 from 90 a day,” said Shahab.

Shahab thinks all school and daycare staff should be fully vaccinated or submit to testing if they’re not.

Though graphs from the physician town hall show an increase in child cases after the school year started, Shahab said only about 23 per cent of cases health officials could trace come from schools. He said household exposure was 47 per cent and there was a linkage with unvaccinated households.

“Most of the schools, when they report a case, it’s one case and a few report two or three cases. I have not seen dozens of cases in schools or large outbreaks in schools. And that speaks to the layers of protection that schools learned how to apply last year and are applying now,” said Shahab.

When kids as young as five can get their shots, Shahab said he expects a high uptake in that group “because that’ll then definitely bring rates down in that age group.”

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