Ontario youth aged 12 to 17 were able to start booking accelerated second doses of their COVID-19 vaccines Monday as the government worked to boost immunization rates before school resumes in September.
Appointments opened at 8 a.m. through the provincial booking portal, public health units and pharmacies. Tweens and teens in that age group are eligible for Pfizer-BioNTech shots, the only vaccine approved for use in youth in Canada.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said high vaccination coverage among youth will allow schools to offer in-person learning this fall and will help extracurricular activities, volunteer opportunities and other in-person experiences resume.
“I’m encouraging families out there to sign their child up,” he said Monday. “By doing so, our schools will be safer and it will allow us to create a much more normal experience I think many of our young people long for.”
Roanne Wetherup of Ottawa set an alarm on Monday during her family camping trip to ensure she could try booking a faster second dose for her 12-year-old daughter Marisol, who received her first shot in June and had been scheduled for another in September.
Appointments at youth clinics weren’t immediately appearing on the online portal when she tried to book just after 8 a.m., but Wetherup said she had better luck through the provincial call centre. After a short wait on the phone, she said she was able to snag an appointment for her daughter for next week.
“She’ll be fully vaccinated before school starts and I couldn’t be happier,” Wetherup said in an interview. She said her daughter was looking forward to being able to resume her competitive gymnastics and return to school in-person.
More than 58 per cent of youth aged 12 to 17 had one dose of a vaccine as of Monday and more than nine per cent were fully vaccinated.
The government has promised to offer full vaccination to all eligible students and educators before classes resume. Pfizer vaccines have been set aside for youth, and youth-focused first dose clinics have been extended this week.
Lecce has said the government will share its back-to-school plan later this month after developing it with the chief medical of health and looking at factors like vaccination rates among staff and students.
Ontario’s opposition parties have said the government needs to improve ventilation and mandate smaller class sizes as it prepares its back-to-school plan.
The Progressive Conservative government has committed to spending $1.6 billion on boosting health and safety measures in schools, and more than $85 million to support learning recovery, but details are still outstanding about what September will look like in Ontario classrooms.
Classes were disrupted multiple times over the last year as the province moved learning online to contend with surges in COVID-19 infections.
Lecce said high vaccination rates among the broader community will allow the province to reopen schools in September for full in-class learning, including for students under 12 who are not currently eligible for vaccination.
As of Monday, 78 per cent of adults in Ontario had at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and 46 per cent were fully vaccinated.
“This gives us an incredible sense of confidence that the communities that our schools are surrounded in will be safer,” Lecce said.
“With low cases in the community, we know absolutely, we’re going to be able to return kids back to class.”
The move to accelerate second vaccine doses for youth comes as the province further ramps up its vaccination campaign.
Ontario initially booked people in for a second shot four months after their initial dose.
The second-dose schedule has been moved up over the last several weeks in light of greater incoming vaccine supply. Eligibility has been expanding based on location and the date when residents got their first shots.
Youth in hot spots for the more infectious Delta variant became eligible to move up their second doses late last month, and the option was offered to young people across the province on Monday.
That means as of Monday, everyone eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the province had the option of booking accelerated second doses, but the onus is still on individuals to seek out and book new appointments themselves.
Lecce said the government is looking at additional “tactics” to boost participation in the province’s vaccine drive in the coming weeks.
“We’re having discussions about ways by which we can bolster the percentage and incentivize participation,” he said, adding that public health units, school systems, health-care providers and other partners are helping to promote vaccination as safe.
Ontario reported 170 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and one death from the virus.
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.
