Australian epidemiologist blasts Horgan for past comments kids not transmitters of COVID

FILE - Premier John Horgan said he's confident in the return-to-school plan. (Courtesy B.C. Government, Flickr)

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) — An epidemiologist in Australia says a comment made by the B.C. premier a month ago about COVID-19 and kids is “wrong” — and “horrifying to hear.”

During a news conference on Nov. 18, while answering a question about what additional restrictions were being considered, John Horgan said, “children are not transmitters of COVID.”

“Adults working within the K to 12 system are bringing the virus into the classrooms and bring it into the schools and that’s led to outbreaks in pockets of British Columbia,” he added.

The comment is now drawing the ire of Dr. Zoe Hyde, an epidemiologist at the University of Western Australia, who has more than 25,000 Twitter followers.

“Wonder why I talk about the role of children in the pandemic a lot? It’s because the message isn’t getting through,” Hyde writes on Twitter along with a clip of Horgan’s comments.

 

While some health officials believed were kids were not major transmitters of the virus earlier in the pandemic, that has changed with research showing kids do transmit COVID — just maybe not as much as adults.

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