As part of the Team Toronto Kids COVID-19 vaccination plan to help children aged five to 11 get vaccinated, Toronto Public Health (TPH) and Team Toronto are operating 49 school-based clinics this week.
The school clinics are a key component of the Team Toronto Kids vaccination strategy that will bring COVID-19 vaccinations directly to children and their families in needs-based neighborhoods across the city. As of end of day Friday, December 3, 86 school-based clinics had occurred since the children’s vaccine became available less than two weeks ago.
This initial phase of school-based clinics offers 230 school-based COVID-19 vaccination clinics in 34 neighbourhoods reaching 55,000 children as part of a data-driven and needs-based approach.
When a school-based vaccination clinic is scheduled, parents and guardians are notified directly through the school. A package of information is sent home from the school including COVID-19 resource material, consent forms and clinic details. Team Toronto Kids continues to make ready its school-based mobile clinics. School-based clinics will be deployed throughout the city over the course of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
Parents and guardians of children aged five to 11 have a number of other locations and vaccination opportunities across the city including fixed clinics run by hospitals, Ontario Health teams, community health centres and more than 110 primary care providers and pediatricians. In addition, more than 240 pharmacies currently have pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available, with more coming on line each week.
As of 5:15 p.m. on Friday, December 3, approximately 57 per cent of appointments for the week of December 6 had been booked, and a total of 41,821 appointments for kids have been booked in the five City-run immunization clinics. Appointments are still available at all five clinics between now and December 24.
Appointments for City-run immunization clinics can be booked by Toronto residents by visiting the City’s COVID-19: How to Get Vaccinated webpage. Click the blue button on the webpage or call the provincial vaccine booking line at 1-833-943-3900. Appointments will continue to be added in the near future, as the vaccination campaign progresses and additional supply is confirmed and received.
The COVID-19 vaccine has been proven safe and highly effective protection for children between the ages of five and 11 from contracting COVID-19. Vaccination helps decrease COVID-19 transmission and protects children and their households from serious outcomes including severe illness and hospitalization. TPH urges all eligible members of the household to get vaccinated to help protect themselves, their families and their communities.
The City announced Friday that in the first full week that Team Toronto began vaccinating children 5 to 11 years old in the city, 32,640 first doses of vaccine have been administered – about 16 per cent of the approximately 200,000 eligible children in Toronto.
Quotes:
“Bringing vaccine clinics to schools is a key part of our successful Team Toronto Kids COVID-19 vaccination plan. We are focused on helping families vaccinate kids as quickly as possible to help protect them from COVID-19. We know that parents will rely heavily on clinics that are close to them, including clinics at the schools their children attend. Our plan to increase the availability of these clinics ensures that we are making it as easy as possible for kids and families to get vaccinated. I want to thank all of our City’s school boards for working with us to make this possible and to the pharmacies and doctors’ offices who are also helping kids get vaccinated.”
– Mayor John Tory
“Team Toronto Kids is working with the city’s four public school boards to ensure vaccination clinics will be available to students in schools. In the first phase, over the next number of weeks, Team Toronto will host 230 school-based clinics, in 34 targeted neighbourhoods, for 55,000 eligible kids. School-based clinics are an integral part of our multi-pronged approach that also includes our City-run clinics, doctors’ offices and pharmacies. Child-friendly, convenient, and accessible — that’s what Team Toronto Kids is all about.”
– Councillor Joe Cressy (Spadina-Fort York), Chair of the Toronto Board of Health
“School-based vaccination clinics are one of the many way children across our city will receive their vaccines. These important opportunities are in addition to the many pharmacies, fixed-site clinics and primary care providers and pediatricians ready to vaccinate our children and provide them the best protection against COVID-19.”
– Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Officer of Health
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