Faith-based institutions make up the majority of Hamilton’s least vaccinated schools

Low vaccination rates at private Christian high schools in Hamilton suggest that religion plays a role in parents' decisions to immunize children against COVID-19.

Seven of the 10 schools with the lowest per cent of students fully vaccinated against COVID are Christian schools, the lowest - Living Hope Christian School on the Mountain - with a vaccine coverage of about 18 per cent.

An eighth school - Cairn Christian School in Stoney Creek - finished just outside of the bottom 10 at 40 per cent.

There's a few people who are very adamant about vaccination ... and then there are a few who you would plunk into the anti-vax grouping," said Cairn executive director Kevin Huinink. Everyone else seems to be kind of keeping quiet because they don't want to be pegged one way or another."

Huinink said at least two-thirds of students come from outside of Hamilton, meaning only about 10 students are included in the data.

Public health says its data only includes eligible students who live in Hamilton. For some private schools with students from multiple jurisdictions, the sample size would be quite small.

Adam Kloostra, principal at Rehoboth Christian School in Copetown where 30.9 per cent of students are vaccinated, said he wouldn't want to speculate" on the values and beliefs of families at the school.

Our purpose is to assist parents in educating their children," he said in an email. We leave private medical decisions to families and we strive to respect the differing views that do exist."

Not all faith-based schools in Hamilton share this vaccine hesitancy. Two schools - Hamilton District Christian High (HDCH) in Ancaster and Calvin Christian School on the Mountain - ranked in the top third of the list.

At HDCH, 72.9 per cent of students are immunized.

As every community does, we have a range of views in our community about COVID vaccinations and the rate probably reflects that distribution of views," principal Duncan Todd said.

Todd said the school attracts students from across the city. About 40 per cent of students reside outside of Hamilton, and are not counted in the statistics.

Two additional faith-based schools, Islamic School of Hamilton and Hamilton Hebrew Academy, are also among the bottom 10. Secular private schools have higher rates, with Hillfield Strathallan at 85.4 per cent and Columbia International at 79.5 per cent.

In September, the city launched Faith in Vaccine, a campaign aimed at promoting immunization among faith communities.

Deirdre Pike, a senior social planner at the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton, said a campaign aimed at promoting vaccines in faith communities had a broad reach," but that it's hard to track the full impact of it locally."

Faith in Vaccine was born when Pike began to observe connections" in communities that already have a background in not thinking that science and religion go together."

Now that I see the numbers, I regret that I didn't work harder to find someone from one of these Christian communities to be a spokesperson," she said.

Dr. Peter Juni, head of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said in the next nine to 12 months, an estimated one in 75 unvaccinated people in their 40s - which includes many parents with school-aged kids - will end up in the hospital, and one in 900 will die.

Everybody who doesn't get vaccinated is foolhardy with their own lives," he told the Spectator. It's just tragic, and entirely unnecessary."

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