Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
When most parents decided to have kids, they probably thought some of their bigger parenting decisions would be about sleep-training, extracurricular activities or the right age to get a phone.
Few probably thought ahead to the best way to protect their kids from a global pandemic that shows no signs of slowing down after nearly a year and a half.
Soon parents might get to decide whether to vaccinate their young children against COVID-19, and according to Canada's top doctor they'll have to consider more than just the safety data.
"It is a complex set of factors," Dr. Teresa Tam, the said chief public health officer, said in a news briefing Friday.
There are no COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in children under 12 in Canada right now, but Pfizer announced earlier this week positive results in its trial for kids aged five and up.
The company said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was safe, well tolerated and showed robust neutralizing antibody responses in kids aged five to 11, with results for children six months to five years old expected as early as later this year.
Once the company submits its findings to the government, Health Canada and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization will look carefully to determine if the vaccine is safe and effective for children.
But with the virus posing a smaller risk of serious illness and death in children, Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine expects parents to have more trepidation about vaccinating their kids than they did getting the shot themselves.
The same is true of long-standing routine vaccines that babies have been getting for many years, said Muhajarine, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.
"If you extrapolate from that to COVID-19 vaccines, I think there will be an even greater concern among some parents about getting their kids inoculated against COVID-19," he said in an interview Friday.
He said parents should consider other factors when weighing the risks and benefits of the vaccine, including the unknown effects of "long COVID."
"Some kids have shown symptoms and signs and challenges, including cognitive challenges, months and months after that initial recovery," he said. "I think we don't know much about long COVID, and we have to keep that in mind."
Rare incidents of serious illness and even death in kids can also become more common as the virus spreads through the population, Tam warned parents.
"We will see children in the hospitals, as well as some rare but serious cases, and the numbers of those can be significant if there's a lot of viral activity," she said.
In Ontario, kids under 11 years old accounted for more than 20 per cent of new COVID-19 cases in the province over the last two days.
That's up from just 12.6 per cent in the last week of August.
Parents and policy-makers will also have to consider which option is most likely to keep kids in schools, Tam said.
In Britain, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) could not recommend universally vaccinating healthy kids age 12 to 15 on health grounds alone, because the margin of benefit was small, and there was evidence of a link to extremely rare cases of myocarditis -- an inflammation of the heart.
In Canada there have been 774 reported instances of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane around the heart, as of Sept. 17, out of 54 million vaccines administered so far.
Tam said government agencies are watching the situation carefully because though instances of myocarditis after vaccination are rare, they appear more commonly in young adults.
"This has got to be weighed against significant social, educational, developmental and mental health impacts on children for missing schools," Tam said.
Ultimately the U.K.'s four chief medical officers opted to offer vaccines to that age group anyways, in part because of the importance of kids being able to stay in their classrooms.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the Public Health Agency of Canada will provide more official advice when they receive and analyze the safety and efficacy data from Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2021.
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.