The move to bar pediatricians from following healthy children is an initiative that was agreed upon between the Quebec government and the Quebec Association of Pediatricians. The goal is to allow pediatricians, who specialize in treating children, to take on the more dire cases rather than follow healthy children something a general practitioner is qualified to do.
Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers president Heidi Yetman said that presents problems. “High schools are a little bit easier because students are a bit more independent, they re 12 and over,” she said, but elementary schools are tougher “especially for the younger grades. In person presence is so, so important. Kindergarten age, grade one and two, it s going to be difficult on the parents. It s going to be difficult on the teachers to do online work.” Quebec s Association of Pediatricians recommends a return to class, reiterating a position it took last spring. In a statement, the association said they are asking Premier Francois Legault “to maintain Jan. 11 as the back-to-school day, while taking all the measures necessary to track and prevent the spread of the virus in schools.. The fight against COVID should not be carried out at the expense of an entire generation of youths.”