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Medical not updated weeks after biometrics: does your processing clock even start?

Canada • Study Permit • study 0 views
By VisaBuddies Communityvia community — compiled from public visa forums

Timeline

Applied
2022-04-09
Documents Submitted
2022-04-14

Documents Needed

  • Biometrics

    Completed 5 days after filing; members said the processing countdown runs from biometrics.

  • Upfront medical

    Attended before filing; the account update lagged well beyond the typical 10–15 days without indicating a problem.

Step-by-Step

An applicant filed on 9 April and gave biometrics on 14 April (2022 — treat timings as historical), then worried when the medical still showed as not updated weeks later: had the advertised 12-week processing countdown even begun?

What members clarified:

  1. The processing countdown starts after biometrics. Not after the medical shows as updated. Once biometrics were done on 14 April, the clock was running.

  2. Medical updates lag — often harmlessly. The typical pattern reported was 10–15 days for the medical to reflect in the account, but several members (including one in the identical situation, and a friend of the poster who attended the same medical appointment and filed the same day) were past that window with no update and no adverse consequence.

  3. A late medical update is not a medical problem. Members' first question was whether anything unusual happened during the exam; with a routine exam, a slow status update is a back-office artifact, not a red flag on your health assessment.

  4. No action needed early on. The consistent advice was simply to wait a few more days — no webform, no panic — because the delay does not affect the visa decision or its overall duration.


Practical takeaway: track your file's age from biometrics, expect the medical status to trail by days or weeks, and reserve escalation for when the overall file exceeds published processing times.

Dos, Don'ts & Tips

  • Tip: The visa processing countdown starts after biometrics — not when the medical status updates.
  • Tip: Medical results typically reflect in 10–15 days but can lag longer with no consequence, especially for routine upfront medicals.
  • Don't: Don't escalate over a slow medical status alone — judge the file against published processing times from the biometrics date.

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