WINNIPEG — Manitoba children ages six months to four years will soon be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The province is set to distribute the Moderna vaccine that was recently approved for young children.
Parents can start booking appointments for their kids Monday, although the shots will at first only be offered to priority groups such as Indigenous children and kids with certain medical conditions, including chronic lung disease and neurologic disorders.
"If your child doesn't fit these initial criteria ... we should be receiving more doses in the near future — by the end of this month or early August," Dr. Brent Roussin, the province's chief public health officer, said Wednesday.
"We'll be expanding eligibility to all of them in the near future."
As for adults, Roussin said Manitoba has no immediate plan to expand eligibility for second booster shots to everyone over 18, as Ontario and Alberta have done.
In Manitoba, access to those fourth doses remains limited to Indigenous people 30 and older, others 50 and over, as well as those in personal care and assisted living homes and some immunocompromised people.
The province is not expanding that eligibility for the time being because data shows one booster provides good protection against severe outcomes, such as hospitalization among people who are not high-risk, Roussin said.
He is also anticipating a vaccine in the near future will be better suited to fight the Omicron variant.
"Because there's going to be a three- to six-month interval between doses, a large fourth-dose campaign right now could potentially delay the receipt of a ... possible better vaccine in the fall," Roussin said.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs welcomed the vaccine rollout for young children.
"Due to overcrowded housing, lack of clean water supply, inadequate supply of nutrition and the health-care resource crisis for First Nations citizens, there is an overrepresentation of First Nations citizens contracting and having higher rates of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19," acting grand chief Cornell McLean said in a news release.
"Expanding the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to include children aged six months to four years old will help protect our most precious and vulnerable First Nations demographic."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2022.
Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press
