Suspensions have been issued for about 1,100 London-area elementary and high schools students as their deadline for being fully vaccinated came due Wednesday.
Suspensions have been issued for about 1,100 London-area elementary and high school students as their deadline for being fully vaccinated came due Wednesday.
“Students receiving suspension notices are those who don’t have up-to-date records or proof of exemption,” said Alex Summers, medical officer of health for the Middlesex-London Health Unit.
These students have been reminded and their parents and guardians have received notification letters during the last year notifying them vaccination records are not up-to-date, he said.
Summers said he expects the number to drop rapidly as parents update their child’s vaccination status online or provide an exemption.
“We make sure there are lots of supports in place for students who are impacted, to make sure they can either submit their records or get any vaccines that might be missing,” he said.
Ontario’s Immunization of Pupils Act requires all elementary and high school students in the province to provide proof of immunization against specific illnesses, or a valid exemption, to attend class.
The required vaccinations include diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, meningococcal disease and whooping cough. Children born in 2010 or later are also required to have the chickenpox shot.
The London-area health unit is not the only one playing catch-up with vaccinations.
The public health unit for Windsor-Essex says more than 1,900 elementary students have been suspended due to out-of-date records.
Parents can get their children up-to-date by attending a catch-up clinic or getting immunized at their family doctor.
However, they can forward their proof of vaccination to the the health unit.
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The Middlesex-London Health Unit began issuing suspension notices earlier in the school year.
“Fortunately, we’re able to keep kids in school and avoid suspensions in many cases,” Summers said. “For example, our first suspension date in January had 3,300 suspension notices mailed, but only around 1,100 that required suspension.
“And that number dropped off dramatically within even a day after suspension happened. This is not a mandatory vaccination process, it’s a mandatory reporting process. You have to do something; you have to let us know and then back to school, no problem.”
The number of kids who didn’t get vaccinated against contagious childhood diseases surged during the pandemic when enforcement of the mandatory shots took a back seat to fighting COVID-19.
In the spring of 2022, more than half of the 80,000 students in the Middlesex-London region were not up to date, Summers said.
“That number came down dramatically in the fall,” he said.
The health unit divided the students who were not up to date into six groups, he said. Each cohort is made of between 4,000 to 6,000 students.
“The act is really critical so that we don’t have outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in schools,” Summers said. “The act also lets us know who is vaccinated and who is not if there is an exposure.
“We need to know who needs to go home and who can stay in school.”
A recent case of the measles in the London-area shows why vaccinations are so important, Summers said.
“Because we have good vaccination rates, we did not see any subsequent transmission from this case,” he said.
For more information visit https://www.healthunit.com/immunization-record-review.