MONTREAL -- Quebec announced that it will open the mass vaccination camapaign to youth between the ages of 12 and 17 starting next week.
Using a hybrid approach, students will be able to book their own appointments, get their shots with families at drive-thru vaccination centres, or get vaccinated with fellow students from their schools.
For those booking their own appointments, youth can do so as of May 25 on the Clic Sante website. The youth campaign will continue through June 23 and is for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine only.
Quebec's health and educations ministers made the announcement during a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Youth can get a head start by booking appointments, as of Friday, to get vaccinated with their families at drive-thru vaccination centres, namely the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve and the Montreal-Trudeau airport.
Under the roll-out campaign for schools, the regional health networks will also coordinate the transportation of the vast majority of students from their schools to vaccination centres to get their first dose between June 7 and 14. Approximately 20 per cent of students will get their shots at school.
Youth under 14 will need a consent form from their parents or legal guardians in order to get vaccinated through their schools.
To accomodate their schedules, health minister Christian Dube said the province is also adding more time slots of vaccinations in evenings and on weekends.
The province expects students will have received their second dose before the start of the next school year in the fall and is pushing younger populations to get their first shot.
Getting youth vaccinated is key to the province's plan to reach herd immunity from COVID-19, with the 12-17-year-old cohort (approximately 530,000 people) representing roughly 6 per cent of the population.
'HURRY UP'
The latest numbers show that there are still more than 360,000 appointments that have not been booked by eligible people in the 18-to-44 age group, according to Dube, so he issued a call-out to them Thursday to "hurry up" before younger populations start booking appointments.
"We've had an excellent response in the categories of 18 years and over and I think it will be the same thing [for youth]," Dube said.
"If we want a nice summer we will need everyone’s collaboration."
Quebec’s immunization committee, the CIQ, officially authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in youth 12 to 17 years old earlier this week after promising results from the drugmaker's phase 3 clinical trials.
After two doses, the efficiency rate was close to 100 per cent in youth, the committee noted. Side effects from the vacines in youth were mild, though more pronounced compared to adults who participated in the trial.
GETTING SECOND DOSES SOONER
The province has said that masks will no longer be mandatory once 75 per cent of the population 12 and older has received their second dose, which is why there's a push, backed by science, to get more younger populations vaccinated.
Despite the vaccination campaign progressing better than expected in recent weeks, there is still no clear indication when, or if, people's appointments for a second dose will be moved up earlier.
Dube said it's too soon to give a timeline since some priority groups still haven't received their first dose.
When asked about speeding up the second dose roll-out, he said he hopes to consult with his team mid-June to see if the province can "accelerate" people's second dose appointments.
