Quarter of Quebec parents do not plan to vaccinate young children against COVID-19: survey – Montreal | The Canadian News

Twenty-seven percent of Quebec parents of children between the ages of five and 11 oppose having their children vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a recent survey by the province’s institute of public health.

According to the survey, conducted from October 1 to 13, 44 percent of parents of children between the ages of five and 11 who responded said they fully agree to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, while 19 percent somewhat agreed.

Another 10 percent said they did not know if they would vaccinate their children.

Eve Dubé, a medical anthropologist at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec who studies doubts about vaccines, said that it is normal that people do not have the firm intention of vaccinating their children through a program that does not yet exist, but is surprised. How many people, 22 percent, said they strongly opposed it.

“The ratio is quite high,” he said in an interview Thursday. “It is higher than what we observed before the launch of the vaccination campaign for 12 to 17 years last spring. That indicates that vaccine hesitancy may be greater in parents of younger children. “

Dubé, one of the researchers who conducted the survey, said she believes the risk-benefit calculation is different for parents of young children, because children are less likely to develop severe cases of COVID-19.

“When we ask parents with little or no intention to vaccinate, the two main reasons are actually: I don’t think vaccines are necessary because my child is not at risk and because of concerns about vaccine safety,” said Dubé. .

Support among parents for vaccinating children ages 12 to 17 increased over the course of the vaccination campaign, and Dubé said he hopes that will happen among parents of younger children. Prime Minister Francois Legault announced this week that the government plans to lift the pandemic health emergency once the youngest age group has been vaccinated, which he hopes will be in early 2022. Pfizer and BioNTech are awaiting approval from Health Canada for your vaccine for children ages five to five. eleven.

While Dubé said there is a relationship between parents’ positions on COVID-19 vaccines for their children and their own vaccination status, some of the respondents who have vaccinated themselves are strongly opposed to vaccinating their children.

“That makes me think that there could be more questions about vaccines around this specific group and that it could be a group that could be more difficult to reach with this campaign,” he said.

The question was asked as part of a larger survey of around 3,300 Quebec residents. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because it was done through an online panel that is not truly random.

Quebec recruits more than 2,100 nurses

Hours earlier, the Quebec government said it has added more than 2,100 full-time nurses to the public system since offering bonuses nearly a month ago.

The latest figures released Thursday show 2,164 nurses have agreed to return to the public health network full time, including 83 retirees and 453 people hired from the private sector. The majority, 1,628 workers, are part-time workers who agreed to switch to full-time hours.

Health Minister Christian Dubé said in a statement that 408 more nurses have been added since an update last week, and talks are under way with another 2,800 potential candidates.

The province was short of 4,000 nurses in the public system on September 23 when it announced its program that offered one-time bonuses of up to $ 18,000 to help fill critical labor shortages in the network.

Meanwhile, Quebec on Thursday reported 428 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths attributed to the new coronavirus. There are 4,773 active cases in the province.

Health authorities reported 274 people in the hospital, a drop of 13 from the previous day. The number of patients requiring intensive care remained unchanged at 72.

The province’s public health institute reported that 90.3 percent of Quebecers aged 12 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine, while 87.3 percent are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The province administered 12,928 doses of vaccines on Wednesday.

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