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Hi, I'm Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti.
I'm an infectious diseases specialist
at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga.
And today I'm going to answer some COVID questions from kids.
That's a great question, Grishma.
The answer is yes.
We don't know how long it lasts for them,
but we do know that at least you get immunity
for something around three months to almost a year
and it might even be longer.
But we're not going to know the answer to that
until we have some more information
in the next couple of years.
But the good news is, is that you do get some
immunity to it, but the best immunity
is going to be from the vaccine itself.
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Hi, Ahmed. That's a great question.
And yeah, that's the case right now.
We're seeing a lot of COVID cases in the hospital,
so we have to be careful.
So the first priority is, of course, taking care
of the patients and giving them medications
to try to help reduce the severity of their disease.
The second thing is that we have to make sure
we protect ourselves and protect other patients
so that when we are seeing people with COVID,
we're wearing our personal protective equipment,
like our masks, shields, we physically distance,
except when we're examining the patient,
and of course, washing our hands, too.
Hi, my name is Ruby Bracken.
I'm 11 years old and I'm from Belle River, Ontario.
I have a question.
Hi, Ruby. Thanks for the question.
The answer to that question is yes.
If you've had COVID, you still can get the vaccine.
And it's something that you have to have a
conversation with your doctor.
What we do recommend, at the very least,
is that if you've had COVID,
you want all your symptoms to be gone like fever,
cough and those types of things before you get the vaccine,
because that way, if you get the vaccine
and you get some kind of side effect from it,
like a low grade fever that lots of people can get,
you know it's from the vaccine
and not from the COVID that you had.
Do people that don't have homes or live in poverty
get affected more by COVID than everyone else?
How can we help them?
Oh, and one more thing.
My birthday was cancelled because of COVID.
If you could please put me on the news,
that would be the best birthday present ever. Thank you.
Hi, Finlee. Happy birthday. Thanks for the question.
I hope you had a great birthday.
So, yes, you're very right.
There are certain populations that are at higher risk
of acquiring COVID and also from getting sick from it.
And one of this is people who are experiencing homelessness.
So for this population, we had to have outreach teams
go out there and speak to them to give them help
in terms of places to isolate if they're sick,
testing, and also, you know,
if they are feeling sick, giving masks as well.
One of the biggest things going forward
is also identifying people that are in this group
and giving them priority to get vaccinations,
because the more people that have vaccinations,
the less people are going to get sick
and the less people that come to hospital.
This will help everybody as a whole.
Hi. I'm Omar.
I'm 11 years old from Brampton, Ontario.
I'd like to know, since the flu vaccine
didn't work for some people, how would we know
if the COVID vaccine will work for everyone?
Hi, Omar. That's a great question.
And one of the biggest ways that we know
that a vaccine is effective is by doing scientific studies.
And at least the
the ones that are at the current time
released in the Canadian public,
we know that they are very effective,
almost 95 per cent.
But of course, the population is not going to be the same
in the study as it is in real life.
So we do have to watch and do ongoing analysis
as people start to get vaccinated more and more
to see how well it works.
But a vaccine doesn't have to be perfect.
Even if it's not 100 per cent,
as long as lots of people get the vaccine,
people will be protected,
the number of cases in the community will drop,
and one of the most important things
is that the hospital system will have pressure taken off of it.
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So I think that the best way to look at this is that
the finish line is in sight.
We are going to get out of this,
but we just have to hold on for a little bit longer
just so we can protect other people from getting sick
and get out of this in the healthiest way possible.
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