Less than 7% of Canadian kids 5 and younger have gotten a COVID vaccine

It has been more than four months since Health Canada approved the first COVID-19 vaccine for children under five, but national uptake has been low.

The latest numbers from the Public Health Agency of Canada show, as of Oct. 9, 6.5 per cent of kids under five have received one dose of vaccine, while one per cent have received two doses.

By comparison, 86.9 per cent of Canadians five and older have received one dose, while 84.2 per cent have received two doses.

"Coverage for COVID vaccination for kids under five is quite strikingly low," said Shannon MacDonald, a nursing professor at the University of Alberta who leads the university's applied immunization research team.

MacDonald said that parents have different approaches to their older kids than their younger kids.

"We've seen that, with COVID vaccines, that what you're willing to do with a 12-year-old is different from what you're willing to do with a five-year-old, [and that's] different than a two-year-old," she said.

"It's partly around a parental choice thing."

MacDonald said access also plays a role, noting that vaccinations rolled out across the country by age, and that means families may have already made multiple trips to clinics.

In Canada, she said, the uptake for routine childhood immunizations is "typically around 80 per cent plus" — but the COVID-19 vaccination may be seen as different because it's new.

"It hasn't been around; parents are maybe a bit concerned about the long-term picture of what that will look like," she said. "The behaviours and attitudes for parents are very different around COVID vaccination."

Though public health measures have been dropped across the country, the pandemic is not over. But health officials across Canada have said it's clear that many people's perception of the pandemic has changed.

Vaccines for kids under five "got rolled out later, at a point in the pandemic where I think Canadians, in general, are not seeing COVID-19 as much of a threat either for the children themselves or for the population at large," said Dr. Jesse Papenburg, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the Montreal Children's Hospital. 

And if other family members with high-risk conditions have already gotten their vaccines or boosters, Papenburg said, parents may now believe there's less immediate need to get their kids vaccinated.

But while children are at a lower risk of developing serious illness from COVID than others, some do still experience complications — and it can be at random, the specialist said.