Aiming to fend off variant, public health organizes vaccination blitz for parents in Montreal's west end

A vaccination campaign is being launched forthe parents of school-and daycare-aged childreninCte Saint-Luc and the Snowdonarea of Montreal.

Dr. Mylne Drouin, Montreal's public health director, said the two areas account for 26 per cent of cases of the more the more contagious B.1.1.7 mutation originally identified in the United Kingdom.

Drouin said the variant has been spreading quickly in the community in the past several weeks and this campaign, which begins next Monday, is an attempt to stop it from making its wayinto other parts of the city.

"We have learned with the first wave and second wave that sometimes we have hot spots, and it goes later into the east and north of Montreal," Drouintold reporters.

Authorities say 10,000 to 15,000 doses of vaccine will be made available in the campaign, whichwill allow some people under age 65 to get a vaccine earlier than in other parts of the city.

Parents with a child in a school or daycare in areas starting with the following postal codes will be eligible:H4W, H3W and H3S.

Drouin saidthe goal of the pilot project is to stop transmission in households. Teachers and daycare workers at those schoolsare, for now, not part of the campaign, though Drouin said that may change in the coming weeks.

Mordechai Antal, the president of the Federation of Teachers of Jewish Schools, saidthe decision not to include teachers and staff isn't sitting well with members.

"All of them are just sort of flabbergasted that they've been on the, as it was described, on the front lines, in a sense, in the classroom trying to keep their classes open," Antal said.

"Why are the teachers, who are in the classroom on a daily basis, exposed to those same kids, not being vaccinated along with the parents?"

The English Montreal School Board has formally asked Drouin to have all staff vaccinated atfour schoolschosen to participate in the pilot project.

Parents at Coronation Elementary School and Project Mile End Alternative High School in Cte des Neiges, John Grant High School in Cte Saint-Luc and Sir Mortimer B. Davis, based at the Jewish General Hospital, will be vaccinated, the EMSB said Thursday.

The teachers appear to have an ally in Education Minister Jean-Franois Roberge, who has asked public health to include teachers in the pilot project.

Roberge took to Twitter to say he felt teachers should be vaccinated as well.

Roxane Borgs Da Silva, a public health professor at Universit de Montral, said the decision to target parents makes sense, given the limited resources available.

"Choices haveto be made, and choices are not always the choice we would like to have," she said.

"Public health wants to protect all Montrealers and prevent variant from spreading to other parts of Montreal."