More than two months after the federal government's approval of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, demand for the jabs among the youngest eligible demographic is still lagging across Alberta.
According to provincial government statistics, roughly 43.7 per cent of Albertans ages five to 11 have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine since Nov. 19, 2021 – the date Health Canada approved the use of Pfizer's vaccine for kids under the age of 12.
Airdrie pharmacist Jason Kmet, the owner of Polaris Travel Clinic and Pharmacy, argues pediatric COVID-19 vaccines have not been readily available in the city, which could be a significant contributor to the slow uptake.
He said his pharmacy did not have any pediatric COVID vaccine on hand as of Jan. 24, adding Alberta Health has led the charge in distributing the shots to date.
“The only way you can get a pediatric Pfizer vaccine for ages five to 11 is if you go through Public Health at AHS,” Kmet said. “I believe they’ve been offering some clinics at the [Airdrie Town and Country Centre] and I think at their office. I don’t know the exact details of the clinic, but availability has been limited.”
According to a prior Alberta government press release from November 2021, nearly 400,000 doses of Pfizer's pediatric vaccine were distributed to 120 AHS vaccination clinics across the province and four pharmacies in communities where AHS clinics are not nearby.
But that strategy has made it difficult for families to book the jabs, according to Kmet, due to the staffing struggles the health authority has been dealing with for the last several weeks, in light of the fifth wave of the pandemic.
“It’s the same resources, the same public health nursing staff that right now are pretty stretched out,” he said. “I don’t know if they have the manpower.”
Kmet said one of his staff members, ironically, had to book an appointment in Calgary to get her child vaccinated, despite working at a facility that has administered COVID-19 vaccines to adults and youth 12 and older for nearly a year.
With less than half of Alberta's eligible youth ages five to 11 vaccinated as of Jan. 24, Kmet argued a lack of easy availability could be the culprit for the lagging uptake. He feels the immunization rates could potentially improve if more private pharmacies were authorized to administer the vaccines.
“I realize it’s not as simple as just a lack of access, but we know right now that if there were more access points, there would be more of an uptake. You just need to make it a little easier to have access,” he said.
“There’s a lot of research and data to back this up, but availability and ease of access definitely impact vaccination rates. When we look at this, the uptake in the vaccine for the five-to-11 range has not been as good as we would like.”
In Airdrie, Alberta government statistics indicate 43 per cent of youth ages five to 11 have received their first dose of a COVID shot, while 4.5 per cent have received a second dose. Meanwhile, 87.5 per cent of Airdronians ages 12 to 19 have been vaccinated with a first dose.
Kmet said there is a slight difference in the formulations of Pfizer's vaccines for adults and for youth, but added it is well within a pharmacist's scope of practice to administer either.
“It’s something that at Polaris, we have a lot of familiarity doing,” he said, adding the business has strategies for administering shots to youth who are frightened of needles.
“Even beyond our point of view, we’re not the only ones. There are certainly other places that have the capacity to do this kind of thing and it’s within their scope.”
Though most youth who contract COVID-19 do not experience severe symptoms or hospitalization from the virus, Kmet said it is an important demographic to vaccinate, given the spread that occurs via transmission in schools.
“Right now, when we start looking at numbers, there are definitely more kids in that age range who are getting infected with COVID, and there’s been an increase in hospitalizations,” he said.
“We know when kids go to school, there’s a lot of spread. I think at this point, we want to do a better job of reducing the risk by getting these kids vaccinated.”
The Alberta College of Pharmacy, Alberta Pharmacists' Association, and AHS all either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment.
