According to Fenton, respiratory illness season tends to peak the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and Interior Health expects the spike in cold and flu cases to only get worse.
Although absenteeism rates in Kamloops-Thompson schools are lower than in other jurisdictions, Dr. Trent Smith, a local pediatrician, said it may just be the calm before the storm.
“We’re hoping things start to pick up here in terms of illnesses among children, especially younger children with colds and flus,” Smith said.
“We’ve seen a lot of this in Ontario, and Alberta is now reporting a big wave, so we think BC will probably experience this in the next week or two.”
Dr. Smith believes that children who have not been exposed to viruses in the past three years are now more susceptible to colds and flu.
“Kids just haven’t developed that immunity because they haven’t encountered these viruses yet. There’s been a bit of an accumulation of — we call them immune-naïve kids, who haven’t been exposed to the usual array of childhood diseases, who they’re exposed to all those things this year,” Dr Smith said.
“We’ve spared a couple of years of children and now it seems, at least in other parts of the country, they’re getting sick.”
According to the BC Center for Disease Control, only 50% of Kamloops children between the ages of five and 11 have received their first COVID-19 vaccine.
“Covid vaccination rates for children under 11 are still very low,” Fenton said, “so the population needs that protection from their primary series and it’s very important to get vaccinated against COVID, no matter how old you are.”
The health official said everyone is reminded to stay up-to-date on both their COVID-19 and flu shots, as well as continue to practice health and safety protocols, including staying at home when you feel sick, wear a mask in crowded spaces and wash your hands frequently.
“The public health interventions we had in place were very effective, so we need to put some of them back in now,” Fenton said.