Vaccine uptake among kindergarten children has fallen to a 10-year low due to pandemic restrictions and a growing anti-vaccination movement sweeping the US.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), by the start of the 2021-2022 school year, only 93 percent of children had received their MMR, DTaP, chickenpox, and polio vaccines, up from 94 percent the previous year.
That means around 250,000 people have entered training without protection from potentially deadly diseases like measles, tetanus and polio that are resurgent in the United States.
dr Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Association of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, said, ‘Hundreds of thousands of children start school without full protection from measles, mumps, whooping cough and other diseases that can easily spread through the classroom.’
CDC data for the 2021-2022 school year shows a 10-year low in MMR vaccination rates among preschoolers. Vaccination coverage varies by state – with Alaska, Wisconsin, DC and Ohio found to have the lowest percentage of MMR vaccinated children
When compared to data from the 2020-2021 school year, MMR intake has decreased by 1 percentage point since the previous year, with only 93.5% of registered kindergarteners being vaccinated against measles
He added that “outbreaks like these are harmful to children and alarming” and warned that “everyone in these communities is being affected”.
The study suggested that falling vaccination rates were due to a number of pandemic-related factors.
Lockdowns and restricted access to hospitals and clinics are believed to have contributed to a two percent drop in the number of kindergarteners getting their shots.
But the recent surge in anti-vaccination sentiment – spurred by misinformation about Covid’s mRNA vaccines – may also have played a role in the increasing number of parents reluctant to vaccinate their children.
In October, the CDC added the Covid vaccine to the regular vaccination schedule and opened the door to local school districts in America to mandate vaccination.
In the United States, children are strongly recommended to receive the first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine around the age of 12 months and the second dose between the ages of four and six years.
DTaP, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular whooping cough, requires five doses, administered between two months and four to six years of age, on average.
The final two vaccines required for school entry are for chickenpox and polio, both of which require multiple doses within a similar time frame.
Vaccination coverage has steadily declined since the 2019-2020 school year.
Nationally, data from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found two-dose MMR coverage of 93 percent, but numbers varied by state.
That was the lowest rate of MMR vaccination since the 2013-2014 school year, when the average rate of fully vaccinated preschoolers was 94.7.
In New York, where most preschoolers were fully vaccinated, 98 percent had received both shots. In Alaska, however, only 78 percent were fully vaccinated.
Scientists say 95 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated against measles to achieve herd immunity because of its rapid spread.
Herd immunity occurs when a large enough portion of a community is immune to a disease, making further spread unlikely.
Meeting this threshold is important to ensure that children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons can still attend school and remain safe.
The data was collected from nearly 4 million children enrolled in kindergarten — typically ages four to five years old — in 49 US states and the District of Columbia.
State and local immigration regulations require schoolchildren in the United States to provide school nurses with proof of immunizations at the beginning of each year.
Of the children surveyed, 2.6 percent had an official waiver — 0.2 percent medical and 2.3 percent non-medical — for one or more of the required vaccines.
Medical exceptions to vaccines are relatively rare and are only given when a child has a proven medical contraindication to the vaccine.
These can include very rare cases of a severe allergic reaction to the injection, which only occurs in about 1 in 1 million cases, or an immune deficiency caused by something like HIV, chemotherapy, or long-term immunosuppressive therapy.
Non-medical exemptions for those who object to vaccination based on sincere religious beliefs are available in 45 states, while exemptions based on personal, moral, or philosophical beliefs are available in 15.
Children without the MMR vaccine risk contracting and spreading measles, a deadly disease declared eradicated in the United States in 2000. Measles requires 95% herd immunity to prevent outbreaks, a level that US kindergarten children are currently unable to achieve
Some states have introduced measures to eliminate both religious and personal belief exemptions to mitigate rapidly declining vaccination rates.
New York, West Virginia, Connecticut, Maine, California, Washington and Mississippi do not allow exceptions to vaccinations other than medical.
Data for the 2021-2022 school year also showed an increase in children who were neither fully vaccinated nor officially exempt — a category that now accounts for 3.9 percent of kindergarten children nationwide.
These non-exempt, non-vaccinated students are often allowed to attend school during a grace period or are provisionally enrolled.
Growing swarms of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children, even in larger areas with high immunization coverage, can lead to disease outbreaks, the report warns.
The first US polio case in nearly a decade was reported in August this year. The unvaccinated adult was partially paralyzed by polio after contracting the virus from an international traveler in Rockland County, NY.
The virus was later found in sewage samples in New York City.
Measles, once thought to be an eradicated disease, also made a resurgence in the United States this year, with at least 20 cases diagnosed in the upper Midwest.
Since it was declared extinct in the US in 2000, the number of unvaccinated American children under the age of two has quadrupled.
As the latest CDC numbers suggest, this trend has been exacerbated by pandemic-driven vaccine hesitancy.