Public health to hold mass HPV, hep B clinics for 18,000 Waterloo region students after pandemic delays
CBC
Waterloo's public health unit is more than a year behind on its standard vaccinations — part of the province's program for Ontario students — with a backlog of about 18,000 Grade 7, 8 and 9 students in the region who now need to get caught up, CBC News has learned.
The province's school-based program inoculates Grade 7 students against three infections:
In a typical year, students are given two shots: one in the fall and one the following spring. The last time the shots were administered was in 2019, said Kristy Wright, manager of vaccine preventable disease for Region of Waterloo Public Health.
"We estimate that it's approximately 18,000 students — so that's a lot of students," Wright told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo.
"The program was interrupted in 2020 as a result of the COVID pandemic," she said. "Public health resources were redeployed to the COVID response, so that's where we've been for the last two and a half years."
Waterloo region isn't alone.
In Hamilton, its public health unit reports school-based vaccinations were at 62 per cent in 2019, but dropped to seven per cent in 2020.
