Team Toronto ramping up school vaccination efforts

Team Toronto is doing everything it can to help support school boards and the Province to safely return to in-person learning on January 17.

Throughout the pandemic, Toronto Public Health (TPH) has worked to support in-class learning and help get children and teens vaccinated against COVID-19. Today, Mayor John Tory outlined steps being taken to sustain that effort and help get more education workers and students vaccinated in the days ahead.

1. Dedicated immunization clinics for Toronto school staff: Four vaccination clinics with appointments specifically for education workers will be hold in two City-run immunization clinics this Sunday, January 9, and next Sunday, January 16. Toronto school boards are working with the City to schedule employees for vaccination appointments. This will help more than 3,500 education workers get vaccinated as soon as possible.
2. School-based clinics: More than 27 clinics – including 22 TPH clinics – are now planned to be held over the next two weeks to help students, their families and education workers get vaccinated. Team Toronto is working with hospital and Ontario Health Teams as well as with the school boards to offer more school-based clinics in areas where vaccination rates need to be increased.
3. Redeploying TPH staff to support additional school clinics: TPH is redeploying staff to work on additional school-based clinics that will be focused on vaccinating students and education workers at several schools.

All of this work builds on the vaccination efforts underway over the last several months. Since November 1, Team Toronto has held approximately 244 school vaccination clinics across Toronto.

Schools are essential for the health, development and wellbeing of children, and Team Toronto is supporting school boards to safely return to in-person learning as quickly as possible.

To date, 92 per cent of 12- to 17-year-olds have their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 88 per cent have two doses. More than 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have also been administered to five- to 11-year-olds in just over a month, with 45 per cent of kids having received their first dose.

Quotes:

“We are doing everything we can to support school boards and the Province to safely return to in-person learning in two weeks. Our school-focused vaccination effort is one more way that Team Toronto is working to help people get vaccinated and to bring this pandemic to an end. Thank you to everyone on Team Toronto working to help education workers and students get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
– Mayor John Tory

“Schools are essential to our kids’ health, development and wellbeing. We have a collective duty to urgently do everything we can to ensure schools can safely reopen. At Team Toronto, we are working non-stop to make sure all of our kids and education workers can get vaccinated and be protected as soon as possible.”
– Councillor Joe Cressy (Spadina-Fort York), Chair of the Toronto Board of Health

“With in-person learning now scheduled to resume on January 17, Toronto Public Health is doing everything we can to support our local school boards and the Province in order for them to reopen schools and reactivate this this essential activity for our young people.”
– Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Officer of Health

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