The proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, U.S. health officials said Thursday.
“The bad news is that it’s gone down since the pandemic and still hasn’t rebounded,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. “The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule.” In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has inched up, lifting the overall exemption rate from 1.6% in the 2011-2012 school year to 3% last year.
“Sometimes these jumps in exemptions can be very local, and it may not reflect a whole state,” said O’Leary, who chairs an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.Officials there said it’s not due to any law or policy change. Rather, “we have observed that there has been misinformation/disinformation impacting people’s decision to vaccinate or not via social media platforms,” officials at the state’s health department said in a statement.
The U.S. has seen measles outbreaks begin when travelers infected elsewhere came to communities with low vaccination rates. That happened in 2019 when about 1,300 measles cases were reported — the most in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. Most of the cases were in were in Orthodox Jewish communities with low vaccination rates.
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