Childhood vaccination rates remain stable in Quebec despite the COVID-19 pandemic

MONTRÉAL — As students head back to school across Quebec, data from the province’s public health institute indicate that vaccination rates have remained stable in recent years.

Experts say Quebec is in a good position and credit efforts that were made in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The institute’s vaccine survey finds that the coverage rate for vaccines due at the start of the school year were 78.3 per cent among seven-year-olds in 2023, compared with 78.4 per cent in 2021.

While vaccination rates declined among very young children during the pandemic, they did not drop further in 2023.

For one-year-olds, complete age-appropriate vaccination coverage was 89.6 per cent, a rate nearly identical to that of 2021 (89.3 per cent) and slightly lower than that of 2019 (92.3 per cent).

For two-years olds, full vaccination coverage was 85.6 per cent in 2023, compared with 84.2 per cent in 2021 and 88.3 per cent in 2019.

“In many other countries, following the pandemic, we saw a certain decline in vaccination coverage,” says Dr. Nicholas Brousseau, a medical adviser at the l’Institut national de santé publique du Québec and co-author of the report. “So seeing that, despite the pandemic, coverage in Quebec has remained relatively stable is good news. But this is the result of a great deal of effort made in the years following the pandemic.”

He notes that, year in and year out, about 90 per cent of children in Quebec “are still well vaccinated” — that is, they have received most of the childhood vaccines included in the immunization schedule. “That’s still a high rate,” he said.

Vaccination is not mandatory in Quebec. The government relies on public awareness and information to maintain public trust.

Dr. Arnaud Gagneur, a pediatrician at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke and a professor at the University of Sherbrooke, is the driving force behind a program that connects new parents with trained counsellors.

The Programme d’entretien motivationnel en maternité pour l’immunisation des enfants, or EMMIE, trains vaccination counsellors who meet with parents to discuss vaccination, beginning in the first few days of a child’s life. The program started as a pilot project in 2018, and has now been expanded throughout Quebec.

“Since the program has been in place for eight years, the counsellors have met with a large proportion of parents in Quebec. This likely contributes to reducing vaccine hesitancy in Quebec,” Gagneur says.

Gagneur is currently working on a study involving a sample of 300 parents. While it has yet to be published, it suggests parents who have met with a vaccination counsellor are much less likely to fall victim to misinformation about vaccines.

In general, vaccination coverage is significantly lower among children born outside Quebec or to mothers born outside Canada, according to the health institute’s report.

Brousseau said workers at local health centres are proactive in offering appointments or following up on missed appointments to ensure all children get their vaccines.

For children starting kindergarten, an additional dose of the combined vaccine against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and polio is normally given.

While this “back-to-school dose” has a lower uptake, Brousseau says there are various catch-up initiatives offered throughout a child’s schooling, including a review of a child’s entire vaccination record in 9th grade.

The main reasons parents hesitate to have their children vaccinated are the fear of side-effects and the belief that vaccines are unnecessary, reports Gagneur, who published a book in 2025 addressing vaccine hesitancy in the population.

He explains that some parents today appear to be less concerned about diseases like diphtheria and polio.

“For some vaccines, these are diseases that have completely disappeared, so parents weren’t familiar with them. It’s hard to get motivated about something you don’t know. You don’t perceive the threat,” he said.

He adds that since the pandemic, a large part of the hesitancy has grown due to “all the questioning of society and the system,” and there has been “a loss of trust in political and health authorities.”

The report states that “25 per cent of parents did not perceive any risk in delaying vaccination, nearly 40 per cent believed that multiple shots increased the risk of side-effects, and 13 per cent felt that children were receiving too many vaccines.”

There are many reasons for vaccine hesitancy, Brousseau said. “Parents often have a lot of questions and a lot of hesitation, which is normal. But we find that, ultimately, when they have access to information, they end up making the right decision and then ensure their child is properly vaccinated.”

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The Canadian Press’s health coverage is supported by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. The Canadian Press is solely responsible for this journalistic content.

Katrine Desautels, The Canadian Press