The principals cannot explain why the COVID-19 vaccination is not offered to all elementary students directly in their school. Access to the vaccine should be equal for all, also says an expert.
Quebec has placed great hopes in the vaccination of young people aged 5 to 11, but according to the Integrated University Health and Social Services Center (CIUSSS) to which their school is attached, Quebec children – and especially their parents – do not have different choices when it comes to deciding where to get their dose.
On the Island of Montreal, for example, some students can be vaccinated directly at their school, while others are invited to go to another establishment during the weekend. Sometimes it is proposed to transport the children to a mass vaccination center for the “few families” who may wish to take advantage of it.
“Although this implies missing educational content and activities in the classroom, we could, for the children of these few families, organize travel to the vaccination center”, wrote in this regard the management of a primary school in Montreal. .
Visits to all schools
With more than 47,000 km2 to be covered, teams from the CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Center-du-Québec will visit each of the territory’s 300 schools starting Thursday. When they make an appointment on Clic Santé, parents see the name of their child’s school appear.
“Our ambition is to have offered vaccination before Christmas to all children who would like to have it”, says Guillaume Cliche, spokesperson for this CIUSSS. When possible, vaccination is offered at the end of classes, so that parents can be present.
To “promote access to the vaccine for all children”, the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal will also vaccinate in each of the 83 schools in its territory.
The same goes for the 86 elementary schools in the territory of the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal. “We will visit, on average, 5 schools in our territory per day,” says spokesperson Christian Merciari. Since last Friday, 10 schools have been visited and 1,530 children have been vaccinated there.
At the CIUSS du Center-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, we will go day and evening to 27 schools with higher levels of deprivation or lower vaccination rates. For its part, the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île has “three options” and will visit some forty schools located in “more vulnerable” environments.
Vaccination for 5 to 11 year olds is currently being deployed at a very uneven rate in the various sectors of the metropolis. While just over 20% of young children received a first dose in Mount Royal, Westmount, Hampstead and Montreal West, for example, barely 3 or 4% of them were vaccinated once in Montreal- North and Saint-Léonard.
“Inexplicable” disparities
School administrators are well aware of these disparities depending on the region or neighborhood where you live.
The Quebec Federation of Educational Institutions said it expected a “more uniform” offer than what currently exists in elementary schools.
President of the Montreal Association of School Directions (AMDES), Kathleen Legault recalls that the CIUSSS of Montreal had nevertheless estimated that one in two students could be vaccinated at school.
“We know that when it is offered at school, for some families who have a lot of children or who do not have a car, it makes things easier”, observes Mme Legault, who reports CIUSSS “clearly less organized” than others.
Infectious disease specialist at the McGill University Health Center, Dr.r Donald Vinh considers it “inexplicable” that there are such inequalities from one CIUSSS to another.
Maybe they are mobilizing the resources to do it, but it has to be offered to everyone in the schools as well. I hope that the inequality we see now is not a permanent policy.
Donald Vinh, infectious disease specialist at the McGill University Health Center
Vaccinating at school “minimizes the inconvenience of going to a vaccination center”, continues Dr Vinh. “If we remove these barriers, we will increase the vaccination rate,” he said.
As of Tuesday, 12.4% of young people aged 5 to 11 had had their first dose, while 22% were waiting for their appointment. According to the most recent data from the INSPQ, 64% of parents of children aged 5 to 11 intend to have their child vaccinated against COVID-19.
Infectious disease specialist Donald Vinh believes that vaccination in this age group has been going very well so far.
“On the other hand, we risk seeing with the children what we have seen with the general public: a plateau made at a certain percentage”, says Dr Vinh. When it will be reached, “it is the parents who will have to be convinced and it will be necessary to have a strategy to approach [ce problème] », Concludes Dr Vinh.
With Thomas de Lorimier and Pierre-André Normandin, Press
Slightly higher risks in children with asthma
Children with asthma are hospitalized more frequently than others with COVID-19 infection, according to a study conducted in Scotland and published on Tuesday, but these cases remain infrequent and deaths are extremely rare. The authors measured the proportion of hospitalizations following coronavirus infection among 5-17 year olds who have been diagnosed with asthma in the past. They compared it with the frequency of these hospitalizations in non-asthmatics. Scottish children with asthma have been admitted to hospital more often to treat COVID-19. The difference is even more marked when one takes into account only the most severe asthmatics, who had been the subject of a previous hospitalization or who had received treatment several times. According to the authors, these data argue for making children with asthma a priority for vaccination if it opens to children under 12 years of age. This is not the case in the United Kingdom, but it is, for example, already in place in the United States for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which has also just been approved for children by the Union health authorities. European.
France Media Agency