3,000 Ottawa students suspended for failing to update vaccine records
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Public health immunization surveillance of students in specific grades is a means of increasing vaccination rates and helping to better understand overall vaccine coverage.
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This year, OPH looked at vaccination records of students in grades 2 and 12 across the city, first sending out notices of incomplete vaccination records and eventually suspension orders to those who had failed to update their records.
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Suspending students is considered a last resort in public health efforts to ensure students are fully vaccinated when they attend school, something that is required under Ontario's Immunization of School Pupils Act unless students have an exemption for medical or philosophical reasons.
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This is the first year OPH has issued suspension notices to students since before the pandemic. The increased surveillance comes as an historically large measles outbreak continues to spread in Ontario, with more than 2,000 people — mainly infants, children and youth — infected since the beginning of the year.
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Most of the cases in the outbreak have been centred in southwestern Ontario. They include a premature infant, who was infected with measles while in the womb and later died.
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Ottawa has seen two measles cases this year — the first since 2019 — but they were related to travel and not the ongoing outbreak.
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Measles is one of the most contagious infectious illnesses, and it is vaccine preventable. But, especially since the pandemic, Ontario and Canada's traditionally high vaccination rates have begun to slide.
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The public health school surveillance work is aimed at helping people catch up on missed vaccines, to update their children's records and helping public health officials better understand vaccination rates.
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Ottawa Public Health, working with school officials, checked the immunization status of children in Grade 2 and in Grade 12 during the 2024-2025 school year.
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It issued 15,000 first notices reminding families to update their children's records, 9,000 suspension notices and, later, around 3,000 suspension orders to those who had failed to comply.
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'Ahead of any suspension, the focus is to ensure parents and guardians are aware of how to verify their records, get any missing routine vaccinations and update their records with OPH,' the public health unit said in a statement, adding that suspensions are 'always a last resort.'
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