Eastern Ontario's top doctor hopes for normal school year

File image of a classroom. (Narongchai Hlawprasert/Adobe Stock Photo/CNN)

Eastern Ontario's top doctor hopes the new school year will be as "normal as possible", suggesting closing down schools or imposing new restrictions will pose a higher risk to children than COVID-19.

Teachers, students and parents are preparing to return to school in September for the fourth school year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2019-2020, 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years featured temporary school closures, classroom closures and cohorts in schools at various times.

In his weekly address on the COVID-19 situation, Eastern Ontario medical officer of health Dr. Paul Roumeliotis said layers of protection in the community would help schools this fall.

"I do believe that it’s important for the kids to go back to school as normal as possible," Dr. Roumeliotis said.

"As a pediatrician, I can tell you that I believe the risk of closing down and doing all these restrictions in schools is probably higher than the risk of COVID at this point, although again we need to do our best to vaccinate everybody and use all the other layers of protection as well."

The Eastern Ontario Health Unit is reporting a low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine for children under the age of 5 since its approval this summer.

Through the summer, the health unit has been "strongly recommending" people take steps to protect yourself and others from COVID-19, including staying up to date on the COVID-19 vaccine, wearing a mask in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor events where distancing is difficult and staying home if you are sick.

Dr. Roumeliotis says the health unit is continuing the rollout of the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, saying it has helped decrease hospitalizations and severe disease in the region.

The Ontario government will announce the next steps of its "Plan to Stay Open" on Thursday. Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Wednesday that the plan will create stability in the province's health-care system and aid in the post-pandemic recovery.

Looking ahead to the fall, eastern Ontario's top doctor says there will be tools in place to deal with any future COVID-19 waves.

"I do believe that 2023 … perhaps would be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. We still another couple months but we do have the tools," Roumelitois said.

"We have the bivalent vaccine, we have antivirals that we will have a lot of information about … so all those tools in place make me more confident that we'll be able to withstand any little wave."

Several vaccine manufacturers are developing formulas that take into account the more infectious Omicron COVID-19 variant that has been driving cases. The new bivalent vaccine is expected to target the COVID-19 variant.