Ontario’s new education minister says vaccination rates among students in some parts of the province are concerning as a measles outbreak continues and some school boards suspend unvaccinated students.
The province has been dealing with a measles outbreak since the end of last year, with hundreds of new cases reported weekly and concern about the spread of the illness, especially among unvaccinated students, growing.
Last week, Ontario reported 155 new measles cases, taking the total number of recorded cases to 816 since the outbreak began. At the same time, authorities, including public health units in Toronto, Ottawa and Waterloo, have started looking to suspend students.
Toronto Public Health said 10,000 students were not up to date on their vaccinations, while the number in Ottawa was around 15,000. Both areas said they had informed unvaccinated students that they needed to update their records or face potential exclusion.
At the beginning of April, Waterloo Public Health ordered the suspension of 1,600 students.
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Education Minister Paul Calandra, who was shuffled into the file from housing after the recent snap election, said he was worried about the number of unvaccinated students in some places.
“I’ll be honest, I am concerned in some areas with respect to low vaccination rates when it comes to measles, so I’m monitoring that very, very closely and working with (Health) Minister (Sylvia) Jones on that as we speak,” he said.
Global News also approached the Ministry of Health for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Jones’ office has previously said the province’s chief medical officer of health is monitoring the situation and encouraging vaccination.
Opposition parties have called on the government to mount a more visible response to the outbreak in recent weeks by making the chief medical officer of health available publicly and through an awareness campaign.
Liberal health critic Adil Shamji said underinvestment in public health had made it harder to ramp up vaccination efforts because local authorities lack staffing.
“We’re seeing no health promotion activities, health education activities taking place in the province,” he said. “We have more people than ever before that don’t have access to a family doctor and public health units that aren’t equipped to catch up vaccinations.”
Calandra said he and the health minister were determined to address vaccination rates.
“I’m on the same page as her on this — not only do we have to increase the vaccination rates, I’ve been concerned with some of the data that I am seeing, especially some parts of the province that have really low vaccination rates when it comes to measles,” he said.
“We’re going to double down with the minister of health … on both communicating and using the schools where we have to to get that message out.”
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