Provincial and health officials have been preaching for weeks that the safest way to get kids back in the classroom this fall is through vaccination.
However, with the vaccine only approved for use in kids 12 and older, that leaves the majority of elementary students unprotected.
Chatham-Kent’s medical officer, Dr. David Colby, says it’s concerning.
“It’s a new ballgame with the Delta variant, it’s so much more transmissible,” Dr. Colby says. “In Israel, they’ve had a very large school-related outbreak among unvaccinated children in school .Of course this will trickle to any other unvaccinated people in society, and we worry about that.”
The ultimate goal, Dr. Colby says, is to have all students vaccinated as soon as possible.
“The more kids that we can get vaccinated, the better ,but we have to wait for Health Canada’s approval for doing that.”
As of the latest figures from Public Health, 47% of youth aged 12-17 in Chatham-Kent have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, compared to 75% of adults 18 and older. 51% of adults in the community are now fully vaccinated with both shots.
Various COVID vaccines are in the midst of being tested for children as young as six months, but Dr. Colby says it’s anyone’s guess when data will be fully analyzed and given approval by Health Canada.
Some in the industry have said a vaccine for those under 12 could be available by the fall, others predict it may not happen until sometime in 2022.