U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Wednesday.
The share of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 3.3%, up from 3% the year before. Meanwhile, 92.7% of kindergartners got their required shots, which is a little lower than the previous two years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic the vaccination rate was 95%, the coverage level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.
The changes may seem slight but are significant, translating to about 80,000 kids not getting vaccinated, health officials say.
The rates help explain a worrisome creep in cases of whooping cough, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, said Dr. Raynard Washington, chair of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which represents 35 large metropolitan public health departments.
I’ve had every vaccine available including the one for meningococcal serogroup B, and I happen to know someone whose parents refused to vaccinate them for anything. We both lived in the same area and had the same level of social interaction.
My friend now suffers from chronic severe asthma due to a pertussis infection, in addition to cognitive impairment and deafness brought on by a meningococcal infection a couple of years after the pertussis infection. They’ve also had a bad case of influenza several times and they have had COVID-19 in recent years.
As others have stated, families shouldn’t be put at risk just because some people refuse to understand science.