Here's what parents need to know about COVID-19 as their children prepare to return to classrooms

As Manitoba families get ready to send their kids back to in-person school on Monday, some are worried about the risks that change might pose.

New cases are still surging in the province, as the highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes a spike in hospitalizations and intensive care admissions among people with COVID-19.

The return to school is also set for just a few days after officials announced schools will no longer notify close contacts about cases. Instead, they'll focus on absenteeism due to COVID-19 as the province shifts its focus from stopping the illness from spreading to managing the risks it poses.

Here's what parents in Manitoba need to know about COVID-19 and their kids.

In all likelihood, yes. At the rate Omicron is spreading, officials say, all Manitobans will probably be exposed to it in the next few weeks.

But it's not all bad news.

While the latest variant is highly contagious, it's "very, very rare" for it to make a child sick enough to be hospitalized, says pediatrician Dr. Jeff Burzynski, an emergency and intensive care physician at Winnipeg's Children's Hospital.

"Certainly, there are lots of kids that are becoming positive. There are very few, if any, that are being admitted to hospital with COVID symptoms or because of COVID," he said.

"I think parents really need to get the message that there [are] very few kids that we're seeing that had anything more than a typical viral illness in children that they've been seeing all of their kids' lives."

And parents aren't as helpless in the face of Omicron as they might feel. One of the best ways to protect kids is to get them fully vaccinated against the illness, says Dr. Fatima Kakkar, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Montreal's Sainte-Justine hospital.

"At this point in the pandemic, children are likely going to see COVID — and either they see COVID vaccinated or unvaccinated," Kakkar told CBC's Information Radio host Marcy Markusa.

"What we're realizing is the effects are mitigated if they're vaccinated."

If your child's COVID-19 test comes back positive, don't panic. 

Omicron seems to be causing even less serious symptoms in kids than previous variants — and that's if they show symptoms at all, Burzynski says .