Waterloo Region student immunizations set to return but suspensions a ways off: Aoki
Global News
Among the many things missed during the COVID-19 response are routine childhood vaccinations. David Aoki of Waterloo Public Health says it will take time to get kids caught up.
As things slowly return to pre-pandemic times in Ontario, there will be plenty of work to do to catch up on things missed as a result of COVID-19.
While many resources were thrown at fighting the virus, other items such as school vaccinations were left in the wings.
David Aoki, Waterloo Public Health’s director of infectious diseases, who is currently leading the region’s COVID vaccination effort, says that thousands of kids need to get their other childhood vaccinations up-to-date.
“We’re still doing that digging into how many shots were missed,” he told reporters on Friday, although he was able to provide an estimate for the Grade 7 shots he referred to as school program.
“Because of the two years of school that we haven’t offered in-school vaccines, we’ve probably missed about 15,000 to 20,000 students that haven’t had their Grade 7 shot.”
Normally, Waterloo Public Health would be providing clinics to get that age group their hepatitis B, meningitis and human papillomavirus vaccines.
“We obviously haven’t been able to run those clinics since March of 2020, and actually even a little bit before if you remember some of the rotating teacher strikes. We had our clinics canceled going back to December of 2019.”
In addition, Aoki says that they have not been conducting their normal reviews which would let parents or guardians know what, if any, shots their children were missing.
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