Mayor John Tory says that the vaccination of younger school-aged children in Toronto will be able to get underway within “a few days” of Health Canada approval, something that is expected as soon as tomorrow.

The federal government has scheduled a briefing with officials at 10 a.m. Friday to share news regarding the authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged five to 11, following weeks of speculation.

Once the vaccine has been formally approved for the age group, approximately 200,000 additional children in Toronto will become eligible to be vaccinated all at once, kicking off a major campaign that will include the use of nearly 400 school-based clinics as well as dozens of community clinics.

“You know there is obviously time needed to ship the vaccines and then to make them available locally and to get the clinics open but think all of that should be done in pretty short order because our plan is ready to go,” Tory told reporters earlier on Thursday. “I think the timetable we have talked about that seems likely is some days, say a week or so after the approval if it comes tomorrow.”

In order for the city to begin inoculating children aged five to 11 it will have to first receive shipments of the reduced dose vaccine from the provincial government.

Tory, however, told reporters that he does not expect a significant delay and that people can have a “reasonable expectation” that shots will be going into the arms of some children by as early as next week.

The mayor also said that the work to convince some hesitant parents to get their children vaccinated is also well underway ahead of Health Canada approval and has been for weeks.

His comments come after Toronto Public Health released partial results of a survey of approximately 43,000 parents, which revealed that only 66 per cent of respondents are certain or somewhat likely to get their child vaccinated right away,

“We still have a challenge in front of us to get from 85 per cent to 90 per cent of adults (fully vaccinated) and we now have the new challenge of taking the 33 per cent of parents who don’t indicate they are likely to do it right away and to reassure them and give them the information they need,” he said. “We are confident that given that information many of these people, if not most, will choose to have their children vaccinated. So public education is going to be a big part of this.

Active cases in schools up 23 per cent over last week

The upcoming approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for younger children comes amid a recent rise in cases in Ontario’s public schools.

On Thursday Ontario’s publicly-funded school boards reported another 129 new cases among students and educational staff, which is the highest number in any single 24-hour period since Oct. 6. At this time last week there were just 81 new cases confirmed over the same 24-hour period.

The number of active cases associated with the public school system is also rising steadily and now stands at 1,200, up 23 per cent from last Thursday.

In the broader community active cases are only up 14 per cent week-over-week, suggesting that schools could now be seeing a quicker rise in infections due to the concentration of unvaccinated children.

Right now about 12 per cent of schools have at least one active cases.

Five of those schools have been closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks, up one from yesterday.

It is the highest number of schools closed at any one point since mid-October.

Speaking with reporters during a news conference on Thursday, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said that all 34 of the province’s public health units have “customized plans” that will be put into place as soon as the vaccine is approved for school-aged children.

He said that the plans will see doses spaced out by a period of eight weeks amid research suggesting that the longer time between shots can result in a more robust immune response.

“We want to get that first dose in before the holidays and then subsequently the second dose eight weeks apart,” he said. “That will best protect our families, decrease transmission in the school setting, help with (attendance) in schools and help get us that one or two per cent of population immunity that is going to be essential to slowing this virus down.”

Since the beginning of the school year there have been 6,132 confirmed school-related cases. That is nearly double the 3,626 cases that had been linked to public schools at this point in 2020.