Hamilton health-care partners encouraging families to get kids vaccinated with mobile, school-based clinics

Hamilton health-care partners are urging families to vaccinate kids against COVID-19.

Less than half of Hamilton kids in the youngest age group have had a first shot and youth vaccination has stalled. Hamilton health-care organizations are working to target lagging rates.

For National Kids and Vaccines Day on Thursday, McMaster Children's Hospital has partnered with the provincial mobile clinic program GO-VAXX and Hamilton public health to bring vaccines for kids to a central Hamilton hospital.

• Ron Joyce Children's Health Centre, 325 Wellington St. N. (Jan. 27, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.). Appointments can be booked online or by calling 1-833-943-3900.

Local vaccination rates for kids ages five to 11, who became eligible in late November, have slowed. As of Jan. 27, 48 per cent have had a first dose - compared to 52.5 per cent provincewide - and 14 per cent have had two doses.

Eighty-five per cent of youth ages 12 to 17 have had a first dose and 80 per cent are fully vaccinated.

Children do not often develop severe disease when they are infected with COVID-19, but severe disease does happen," Dr. Jeffrey Pernica, head of the division of infectious disease in the department of pediatrics at MacKids, said in a Dec. 17 YouTube video. Prevention is probably going to be the safest course."

Hamilton public health has added two school-based vaccine clinics in the lower city on Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.:

• St. Ann Catholic Elementary School, 15 St. Ann St. (open to the following schools: St. Ann (Hamilton), Holy Name of Jesus, St. Patrick, St. Lawrence);

• Queen Victoria Elementary School, 166 Forest Ave. (open to the following schools: Queen Victoria, Central, Dr. J.E. Davey, Ryerson, Bennetto, Cathy Wever, Hess Street).

Kids ages five to 11 needing a first or second dose can walk in to these clinics.

Hamilton public health says school-based clinics are part of an opportunistic and hyper-localized strategy" to increase vaccination.

As a community, we are collectively concerned about the impact COVID-19, remote learning and public health restrictions are having on the mental and emotional well-being of children and youth," public health said in a Jan. 26 release. It's critical that community members ... take the necessary steps to get fully vaccinated."

Public health says more school-based clinics will be added.

Walk-in clinics in Hamilton open to kids, youth and caregivers include:

• Mountain Vaccine Clinic - Limeridge Mall, 999 Upper Wentworth St. (Jan. 24 to 30, 1 to 7 p.m.; Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.);

• David Braley Health Sciences Centre, 100 Main St. W. (Wednesday to Friday, 12:30 to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.);

• Centre on Barton, 1211 Barton St. E. (Jan. 24 to 30, 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, 1 to 7 p.m.);

• Huntington Park Recreation Centre, 87 Brentwood Dr. (1 to 3:10 p.m.);

• East End Public Health Clinic, 247 Centennial Pkwy. N. (1 to 3:10 p.m.)

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com