Kids’ COVID vaccinations in Saskatchewan to start Wednesday

Saskatchewan will start vaccinating children between the ages of five and 11 against COVID-19 on Wednesday.

Sheila Anderson, the vaccine chief responsible for the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s COVID-19 immunization campaign, said during a media conference Monday that parents and guardians can start booking appointments online Tuesday at 8 a.m.

The doses are to start arriving in Regina and Saskatoon on Tuesday, then Prince Albert, North Battleford, Yorkton and Swift Current on Wednesday, and the rest of the province as the week goes on.

More than 112,000 doses of Pfizer’s pediatric vaccine are to arrive in Saskatchewan, enough for a first dose for every child in the province in the age group.

Parents or guardians will have to give their consent.

Some parents are worried about the vaccine, even if they have already been vaccinated themselves.

Dr. Tania Diener, the medical health officer responsible for immunization and physician co-lead of the SHA’s COVID-19 immunization campaign, said it’s still important to get everyone vaccinated.

“Children do not get sick as often as adults and children might not get complications or die as much as adults, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Children can get sick, children can end up in the ICU and children can die, unfortunately, and it has happened,” said Diener.

Diener said there is also no guarantee that if a child doesn’t have any chronic conditions, they would be fine if they got COVID.

“So it’s a much safer approach to get your kid immunized and thereby protect than taking the chance of getting them protected through a disease that might actually cause a lot of complications or even death,” said Diener.

The doctor also said children can be sick without any symptoms and can therefore pass it on to others without knowing.

“So it’s also important for kids to get immunized to stop that transmission of the virus in our community and protect others around them,” explained Diener.

Diener encouraged people with questions and concerns to talk to medical professionals, and to make sure they’re getting information from reputable resources.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority will do the vaccinations in 221 clinics in 141 communities. There will be walk-in clinics and booked appointments, as well as extended hours for added convenience.

Vaccinations will also be available for five- to 11-year-olds from Indigenous Services Canada, Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority and participating pharmacies.

As well, there will be clinics at more than 100 schools, allowing parents or guardians to be on hand to support the children. Information on those clinics is to be shared with parents and students directly.

Anderson said teams are dedicated to getting vaccines into arms and so they’re using a very broad-based approach in a number of different ways and with different hours, including rotational clinics in some smaller communities.

“They’re in a certain community on a certain date or a couple times a week. So we’re using the same method that we’ve used throughout the vaccine campaign to offer this pediatric vaccine too,” said Anderson.

Though she expects demand for the children’s vaccines to be high for the first few weeks, Anderson said officials believe they’ll be able to match that demand.

The provincial government said the locations of participating pharmacies will be updated here when the pharmacies get their supply of pediatric vaccine.

Diener said children can get a second dose within 21 days of the first, but it’s recommended that people should wait eight weeks between doses.

“Emerging evidence is showing that it will likely have a more robust and a more durable protection, so better efficacy,” said Diener, though she did mention the evidence is only emerging and it’s based on adults.

Health Canada approved Pfizer’s vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11 on Friday. In clinical trials, the pediatric vaccine’s efficacy was 90.7 per cent for this age group.

Diener said side-effects are expected, but they usually resolve within one to two days. They have involved soreness at the injection site and muscle pain. She said the trials appeared to show the children’s side-effects were less than those adults got.

“There were no serious side-effects identified, there were no safety signals identified (and) there were no deaths identified,” explained Diener.

The pediatric vaccine will be smaller in volume than doses given to adolescents and adults and is a different formulation.

Saskatchewan previously had outlined its initial plan for vaccinating kids on Oct. 26.

As of Monday’s COVID update from the Ministry of Health, there have been 13,529 cases involving kids under the age of 11 since the pandemic started in Saskatchewan. The province has reported a total of 80,413 cases as of Monday.