“Monday cannot come soon enough”: the president of the BCTF is delighted with the plan for the deployment of the vaccination of children

British Columbia’s childhood immunization program for children ages 5 to 11 kicks off Monday.

Parents of children who have registered will begin to receive their appointment invitations, in the order they were received on the provincial vaccine website.

The announcement was greeted with applause from BC Teachers Federation President Teri Mooring.

She told Vista Radio that vaccination of this age group was essential as more infections among school-aged children were being reported.

“We are also seeing more epidemics and school closures this year compared to last year. There is certainly a critical need for everyone to be vaccinated and I think speeding it up is great and November 29 cannot come soon enough. “

“It seems to me that the province is doing a good job in making this as accessible as possible. You can make an appointment for all your children and then you can get vaccinated and I think that is a very good initiative.

According to Dr Bonnie Henry, there were 457 cases of the virus between November 16 and 22 in children aged 5 to 11.

In addition, 153 children aged 12 to 17 were infected as well as 111 in the 0-4 age category.

More than 90,000 of the 360,000 eligible children have been registered to date by their parents.

However, when invitations are sent to families, verbal parental consent will be required before vaccines are administered to children.

Mooring adds when it is a child’s turn to receive the first dose, making the treatment readily available would be of great help.

“So whether it is in schools, in clinics, there must be several ways for students and families to access these vaccines. “

Another key is to increase immunization rates among school-aged children in Northern Health areas such as Peace River North, South and Nechako areas.

“These are the areas that we really need to focus on and make sure there is enough education provided to families on vaccine safety and the importance of getting the vaccine and this is an important part of that.” , Mooring said.

Remote First Nations communities will see health officials offering vaccines to children around the same time that booster shots are offered to adults 18 and older.