Parents shouldn't be 'bypassing' medical advice on vaccine: doctor

A family doctor in Cambridge, Ont., says questions she gets from parents about the COVID-19 vaccine for children are not significantly different from those she hears about other, better-known vaccines.

But she warns that parents should seek medical information from doctors, not friends, in order to get accurate information.

Dr. Sharon Bal is a family doctor in Cambridge and also serves as the primary care physician lead for Waterloo region's vaccine task force.

During Friday's regional public health media briefing, Bal said the questions she is asked are not unlike those she's answered in the past when new vaccines have been introduced, such as the one for the human papillomavirus (HPV).

She said it's a "legitimate conversation around any new medication, any new vaccine."

Waterloo region's COVID-19 vaccine dashboard showed on Friday that just over 78 per cent of the population has received two doses.

It also showed just over half — 53.2 per cent — of children aged five to 11 have their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine while 17 per cent have two doses.

Many parents say they've heard COVID-19 is mild in children, so they're not sure the vaccine is necessary.

"The conversation that we have there is that, yes, most children do have mild illness," she said, but points out that's a narrow interpretation of statistics. The numbers also mean some children will become sick, possibly very sick.

"Is that your child? There's no way that we would really know that," she said.

Ask doctors, not friends

She's also been answering questions about what complications a child would face if they do get COVID-19, including long-term effects.

"A lot of times people are looking for some reassurance from a health care professional that knows their child," she said.

"Sometimes they actually do want to do quite a bit more research so we can point them toward different websites like, for example, I've gone through the Canadian Paediatric Society's website with folks given some written materials."

They are conversations Bal says she and other doctors want to have with patients who have questions like they have in the past.

"The difference is that people are bypassing health-care professionals to have those conversations and chatting with lots of other people and getting a little bit stressed," she said.

"That was becoming a barrier. I think more and more when when folks connect with their normal health care provider, their pediatrician or family doctor, the questions themselves are really, really reasonable questions that we feel really confident answering."