Board of health backs call for more sophisticated vaccination registry

Toronto's board of health voted Monday to support a recommendation for a provincewide immunization registry. 

In September, Public Health Ontario's (PHO) immunization advisory committee recommended all immunizations be recorded in a real-time database — in effect, an expansion of the system already in place for COVID vaccinations. 

"Ontario does not have a reliable, complete or timely way to record immunization information for all people in Ontario," the PHO report said. "Its current system for collecting immunization information is outdated and mostly limited to school-aged children.

"Most people in Ontario still have a paper-based record, known as their 'yellow immunization card,' which documents their past immunizations. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that a centralized, electronic vaccination record for everyone in Ontario is not only feasible but also the foundation of a high-performing immunization system in the 21st century."

A database would allow people and their health care providers to get information about their vaccinations and give policy-makers a chance to see in detail whether vaccination programs were succeeding, the report argued. 

Toronto Public Health's report on the issue, which supported PHO's position, said a registry would allow public health resources to be used on something other than manually reviewing paper-based vaccination records. 

When the PHO report was released in September, the Ministry of Health pointed out to Queen’s Park Today that there's an existing vaccination database, Panorama. 

However, a 2014 audit of Panorama by the province's auditor general found troubling gaps in the information it captures. 

"Parents must still report their children’s vaccinations to their local public health unit," it said. "This practice continues to result in problems with data accuracy and completeness. Furthermore, there are no plans to track vaccinations administered to adults."

The auditor general said $3 million worth of vaccines had gone to waste because they had been over-ordered by health providers or local public health units, a problem that better data would have helped avoid. 

In a 2022 followup report, the AG discovered the gaps never went away, calling the data "incomplete."

A Toronto Public Health report also warned that routine school-mandated vaccinations for diseases such as Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and Hepatitis B were at lower levels than before the pandemic. Depending on the disease, vaccination levels dropped four per cent to 12 per cent. The board of health accepted a recommendation for a "comprehensive campaign" to raise the numbers.

Additionally, the board voted to ask the province to fully fund HPV vaccination for all people under the age of 26. At present, the HPV vaccine is only free for students in Grade 7.