B.C. students with organ transplants at risk without masks for everyone, says parent

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — Going back to school during the fourth wave of the pandemic in B.C. is stressful enough for parents of healthy children, let alone those whose kids have surgical transplants.

A Vancouver father of an immunocompromised third-grader says he’s worried public health guidelines aren’t doing enough to keep kids like his young daughter safe.

His seven-year-old daughter is at greater risk because she had an organ transplant at 18 months, meaning she needs more protection from the COVID-19 virus to stay safe and healthy.

“I want to trust the medical system. I don’t think that all of the information coming out is wrong. I want to believe it. I want to believe that my children, my family, are going to be healthy, and if that means I follow the guidelines, I’ll follow the guidelines,” said Stephen Hansen-Langmann.

He’s on the board of directors of the Children’s Organ Transplant Society and says it is a concern many parents of children with transplants are facing with the school year looming.

“I really hope that the schools in B.C. do take into consideration that a lot of children do have health issues,” he says. “Any family with a child with a health condition, our stress level is much higher than most, and that’s just the way it is.”

He says making masks mandatory for everyone would help keep his daughter safe, and help parents’ anxieties.

In B.C., only children in grades four and above are required to wear a mask at school. Children in kindergarten to grade three do not need to wear one.

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Teri Mooring, president of the BC Teachers’ Federation says they are appealing to parents to get their children to wear a mask, even if it’s not mandatory.

“We know that the health and safety guidelines are not set in stone, they changed throughout the last school year. We’re asking families to send their children to school, their young children, with masks and ask them to wear them,” Mooring said.

“We think the mask mandate should extend to kindergarten,” Mooring said. Adding the BCTF is also supportive of immunizations for anyone who is eligible. “We’d like to see vaccine clinics targeting 12 to 17-year-olds,” she said about a way to get eligible students vaccinated as soon as possible.

Currently, teachers are not mandated to be vaccinated across the province, something many critics have called for as the Delta variant continues to spread and hospitalizations rise.

On Tuesday, B.C.’s provincial health officer appealed for anyone working with kids to get their shots, but did not announce any plans to make vaccines required for school staff.

As a parent, Hansen-Langmann implores everyone, including anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, to put their politics aside to protect youth at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.

He says the option of just keeping her home, is not in her best interest.

“I really want to think about last year first, right? Last year, was absolutely brutal, mostly because we left our daughter out in the last month, but we noticed a big change in her from the spring until we started school again,” he said.

He says although they feel uncomfortable with sending her back to class, but they know how important it is for kids to keep socializing. He says school provides a wonderful opportunity for those connections that are sorely missed when absent.

“When people talk about children with depression, it’s real. We were arguing more. Our daughter would say, ‘Why am I the only one home? My friends are all in school,’ and she was only in grade two at the time but she was already forming that, ‘Why me?'” he explains.

His daughter cried with joy when her parents told her she could go back to school in the fall and he hopes that everyone will do the right thing to ensure she can stay healthy.