Manitoba has lowered its age eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Joss Reimer, head of Manitoba's Vaccine Implementation Task Force says effective immediately, anyone born on or before December 31st, 2009, is now eligible for the vaccine. Prior to now, Manitobans needed to be at least 12 years of age to be eligible.

Dr. Reimer says the main reason they are making the shift from age to birth year, is because of school rollout. She notes when the province does its school immunizations, this is done based on cohorts so that an entire grade is vaccinated at one time.

"So as we move into the school year, we need to have a similar process," she explains. "And as we have already said, we plan to take COVID-19 vaccines to all of the schools in Manitoba where there are children who are eligible."

Dr. Reimer says in order to facilitate that, they held consultations with the education department and local public health units who regularly do school-based immunization programs.

"It became clear that logistically it was a much better approach to include the entire cohort instead of breaking it up and having some of the children in a grade getting a vaccine, others not," she says. "And so that's where this shift is coming from."

Dr. Reimer suggests this shift could immediately open up eligibility to an additional 4,000 to 5,000 children in our province.

Prior to now, Manitoba had been taking its cues from Health Canada, which has only recommended COVID-19 vaccinations for those aged 12 and up. But, Dr. Reimer says there are provisions and precedents in place for doing what is called, an off-label of a medication. She notes this is something that physicians can do for a variety of reasons. For example, Dr. Reimer says sometimes there is good evidence behind the use of a medication, but the company has just never applied to have it used in a certain way. In such cases, physicians might prescribe a medication off-label, without having approval from Health Canada.

In this case, Dr. Reimer says Manitoba is following what has already been done in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, while other provinces are considering the same thing.

"We take it seriously anytime that we move to an off-label use," stresses Dr. Reimer. "These kids are within a couple of months of being twelve, so certainly physiologically unlikely to have any difference between being eleven years old and ten months or twelve years old and zero months."

Dr. Reimer says you have to set a cutoff at some point and Manitoba is trying to stay as consistent with the research as possible.