Measles cases continue to rise in Ontario.
Public Health Ontario reported 197 new measles cases in the province Thursday, raising the total number of infections to 1,440 in Ontario since the fall.
The largest share of the reported cases has so far been found in the Southwestern Public Health unit, which includes Oxford and Eglin County as well as the City of St. Thomas.
According to Thursday’s report, the 496 cases in the Southwestern Public Health region represent more than 34 per cent of the measles infections in Ontario as of May 6.
The region saw 67 new measles cases between April 29 and May 6, the report showed.
Premier Doug Ford’s government has been under fire from opposition parties over the response to Ontario’s measles outbreak, which now has had hundreds more reported cases than the entire United States this year, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Critics say the province needs to take the virus outbreak more seriously and develop sharper plans to boost immunization rates for measles, a highly infectious disease that can have severe complications for children, pregnant women and those who are immunocompromised.
Provincial government health officials, including Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore and Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said this week they believe the province’s immunization strategy is working in most parts of Ontario.
Ford told reporters Wednesday the province was “throwing everything and the kitchen sink” at addressing the measles outbreak, including sending 150,000 vaccine shots across the province and spending $2 million in ads promoting children’s immunization.
He also pointed at “certain communities” in Ontario that he said were not getting vaccinated because of “religious reasons.”
“I encourage anyone and everyone: you need to get your kids vaccinated, because if not, it just starts spreading,” said Ford.
Liberal MPP and public health critic Adil Shamji accused the premier of using small religious communities as scapegoats for his government’s failure to contain the measles outbreak.
“Faith-based communities that have reservations about vaccines exist across the entire continent, in the United States and in other provinces in our country,” he said Thursday. “Only Ontario is having a problem with runaway measles to the scale that we're experiencing right now.”
Shamji pointed to Public Health Ontario numbers from last year showing that only 70 per cent of seven-year-olds in the province were fully vaccinated against measles, 25 per cent lower than the health authority’s target.
He said the province needs to boost public health funding to allow for “contextually sensitive” responses to specific communities that might be hesitant to get measles vaccines.
In a statement, Ford spokesperson Hannah Jensen said local public health units have set up mobile vaccine clinics in communities where vaccine rates are low.
She added that public health information “has also been translated into various languages to target those communities.”
Public Health Ontario’s next measles surveillance report is expected on May 15.
