With new Yukon daycare recommendations, here's a doctor's advice for parents on COVID-19

Yukon parents woke up to difficult news on Monday.

As the territory experiences what's being described by the chief medical officer of health as its first true wave of COVID-19 infections, they're being asked to keep children home from daycare for two weeks if possible.

The advice comes after several daycares were identified as exposure locations including one in Whitehorse that had four children test positive for the virus.

So how worried should parents be? And what safety principles should they keep in mind?

Dr. Dan Flanders,a pediatrician and the director of Kindercare Pediatrics in Toronto,spoke with host Leonard Linklater on CBC Radio's Midday Cafe on Monday.

Their conversation has been condensed.

How concerned should parents be about COVID-19 and their children?

Generally, we should be concerned about COVID-19 spreading throughout our communities. No doubt, over time we've learned children are part of the spreading process. We cannot worry so much about children getting very sick, having bad complications, having to go to ICU or dying, because for whatever reason children are a lot less susceptible to severe illness.

But we do worry that children become part of the spreading mechanism because eventually the virus will make its way to more vulnerable people.

In the Yukon, we're dealing with the gamma variant. How can that affect kids?

Certainly it's more transmissible and concerning than the original COVID-19 we saw last year. The other important thing about gamma is it is quite sensitive to the vaccine.

So, people who are vaccinated will have pretty good protection against the gamma variant.

What questions and concerns are you hearing from parents?

We hear a lot about what they can do to keep their kids protected, and to protect the community from the spread of the virus.

There are things that we can do in that regard.

Children over 12 are eligible to get vaccinated, so that's a really important thing parents can do. The other big thing is trying to have as many activities happening outside. And then all of the general precautions that we talk about, whether it's masking or social distancing. All those recommendations are just as applicable to children as adults.

Parents have also been quite concerned about side-effects of the vaccine for children, solots of conversation around the risk of inflammation of the heart as a side-effect. Data is coming out more and more these days, it's becoming quite clear that's a very rare side-effect and when it does happen, it seems to be quite mild.

Most of the medical authorities are saying that the risk of not getting vaccinated is a lot higher than the risk of getting vaccinated.

There's no vaccine available for kids under age 12 right now is that a reason to be concerned?

Yes, because if we can't vaccinate the kids under12 then this summer, we're probably going to see a lot of spread happening [in that age group.]

Fingers crossed come fall or winter, we'll get approval to start vaccinating children under 12 [years old] as well.

What should parents do if they are concerned their child may have COVID-19?

If they are even the slightest bit concerned they should contact the regional public health authority.

Typically they would get tested and be isolated. I don't tend to worry so much about the children's health, or adverse outcomes, because it tends to be very mild.