Former NACI Chair: Covid less deadly to kids than the flu
Mike Campbell
Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh, Chair of Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) from 2017 to 2021, said that Covid is less deadly than the flu is for most age groups.
Speaking in Quebec at a provincial update on Covid 19, a reporter asked Dr. Quach-Thanh to repeat what she had said regarding the risk from Covid and other respiratory viruses in schools.
“What we’ve seen in terms of severity of Covid disease in children is that it is actually less than influenza for most age groups in terms of risk of hospitalization,” Quach-Thanh said.
“And so, at one point in time, we’ll have to treat this virus as all the others and not be as stringent in trying to see where it’s coming from, trying to prevent its transmission completely, mainly because we now have — most of us — underlying immunity, be it through vaccination and/or previous infection.”
She further stated that we’d reached a “turning point” with Covid, and kids can cope with it pretty well, just like they do with other respiratory viruses.