It could take years to catch up on child vaccinations in Ontario post-pandemic

Ontario is still playing catch up on routine vaccinations that many children missed during the pandemic and public health officials are warning that it could take years to solve the problem.

Ontario is still playing catch up on routine vaccinations that many children missed during the pandemic and public health officials are warning that it could take years to solve the problem.

“What we see around the world is when the vaccination rates drop, you have a resurgence of vaccine preventable disease,” Dr. Anna Banerji, a Toronto-based pediatric infectious disease specialist, told CTV News Toronto.

“If someone had measles and they were with a group of unvaccinated kids, then for every person that has measles, they typically would infect about nine or 10 other kids. And so it's extremely, extremely infectious.”

About 60 per cent of seven-year-olds are fully vaccinated against the measles—as well as other illnesses such as mumps and varicella—according to a report published by Public Health Ontario in the end of March.

This is a significant drop from coverage in 2019-2020, when those numbers were between 82 per cent and 86 per cent.

Ontario has seen a mild resurgence of the measles this year, with 13 cases identified in 2024 so far.

Of the seven children infected, five children were unvaccinated while the immunization status of two others were unknown.