Think tank calls for COVID-19 to be added to list of diseases Ontario students must be vaccinated against

A physically distanced classroom is seen at Kensington Community School amidst the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday, September 1, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio

TORONTO -

The Doug Ford government is being urged to add COVID-19 to the list of diseases that primary and secondary school students must be immunized against to attend classes in person.

The think tank People for Education has sent an open letter to Education Minister Stephen Lecce and Health Minister Christine Elliott asking them to “immediately” add COVID-19 to the list of diseases for which vaccination is already mandated under Ontario’s Immunization of School Pupils Act.

The plea comes in the wake of the Ford government announcing that it would enact a policy that would required educational workers to either get fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or participate in a regular rapid testing program.

“This issue is particularly urgent because fewer than 70 per cent of eligible 12- to 17-year-olds in Ontario are fully vaccinated, and students will be returning to school in just over two weeks,” People for Education Executive Director Annie Kidder wrote in the letter to Elliott and Lecce. “Families and staff need greater assurance that everything possible is being done to ensure that their schools are safe.”

Ontario’s public schools have been shuttered for in-person learning since April but will reopen next month, amid a recent rise in cases.

While there are currently no COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in children under 12, Kidder said that her group is “strongly recommending” that the government mandate vaccination for those who are eligible as part of its return to school plan.

She said that the government should also “expedite the development of standardized proof of vaccination certificates” to help school administrators implement new policies that set different isolation requirements for close contacts on the basis of whether they have been vaccinated.

“I am hopeful that the premier is listening and that the ministers are listening,” she said during an interview with CP24 on Monday afternoon. “It is not that hard to change (the policy). We still have two weeks before school starts and there is time for parents to get their eligible children vaccinated especially if we make it as easy as possible by making schools vaccination centres.”

Kidder said that “if parents and families know every single person who can be vaccinated in schools,” is it will ultimately help them feel more secure about their children returning to the classroom amid the fourth wave of the pandemic.

That, she said, is important given research which suggests that the mental health of children suffered significantly due to the repeated closure of schools during earlier phases of the pandemic.

Her request to mandate vaccination for both eligible students and staff comes as concerns grow about a possible rise in COVID-19 transmission among school-aged children once classes resume.

In an interview with CTV News Channel on Monday morning, the scientific director of the science table Dr. Peter Juni conceded that reopening schools “will impact” the recent growth in cases and suggested that additional public health measures may be necessary to keep case counts down until such a time as children under 12 can be vaccinated.

“You have a risk even among children of perhaps one in 300 ending in hospital and one in 1,000 ending up in the ICU. It is not nothing,” he said. “You also have a three to five per cent (chance) if a kid gets infected of experiencing long COVID.”

There are currently nine diseases that students have to be vaccinated against to attend school, including measles, mumps and polio, among others. Children born in 2010 or later also have to be vaccinated against chickenpox.