1,428 Waterloo Region high school students suspended over out-of-date vaccination records

Nearly 1,500 Waterloo Region high school students have been suspended over out-of-date vaccination records.

"There's 1,428 students that are suspended as of this morning,” David Aoki, director of infectious diseases and chief nursing officer for the Region of Waterloo, said Wednesday. “We have clinics running, and we're hoping to reduce that number as quickly as possible.”

Provincial legislation requires all elementary and secondary school students to be vaccinated against diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis, unless they have a valid exemption. If not, students can be suspended for up to 20 days.

"This will be another thing that will happen again next year when we run this process. So it's better to even submit an exemption if your choice is not to vaccinate or submit the paperwork if you have it, because we don't want to have this recur next year," Aoki said.

When suspension orders were sent to families last month, 6,819 secondary school students had out-of-date records. Since then, the majority either updated their records, gotten vaccinated or provided an exemption. The remaining 1,428 were suspended on Wednesday.

"Delaying... increases the risk of disease. Should a disease pop up, then there's people that are potentially not protected," Aoki said.

Earlier this spring, 2,269 elementary school students were suspended for out-of-date vaccination records.

Aoki said the majority of them resolved the issue in the first week of suspension. He said only 59 elementary students ended up sitting out all 20 days.

According to Aoki, the number of students being suspended is higher than usual. He believes that’s because public health did not enforce vaccination requirements during the pandemic and there were fewer clinics.

"Because of the five-year delay of not doing this and not kind of getting people caught up, we're seeing about three times the number of what we saw. So this matches elementary. We know that it's a larger number than normal. But what we want to do is make sure we get caught up, not delay the process and stretch it out over a number of years. Then that way we expect next year to return to kind of a normal year," Aoki said.

Although students can only be suspended for 20 days, if they don’t update or provide exemptions, they can face the same suspensions each year of school until they are 18.

Clinics were available in schools but have now ended. Appointments can be booked through public health for students to get up to date. Clinics are available in Cambridge and Waterloo.

What to do if your child is suspended

• Book a vaccine appointment with public health 
• If you have scheduled a vaccine appointment with your primary health care provider or public health, please report your upcoming appointment online.
• If the student has received the vaccine elsewhere, please report the vaccine record online.
• Once the region has processed your form, the student’s suspension will be resolved. Due to high volumes, it may take one to two business days to process submissions, the region said. Once resolved, you will receive an email and the student can return to school the following day.