Vaccination rates in Ohio kindergarteners drop, sparking concern in health experts

Ohio's youngest school children remain under-vaccinated in 2024, a trend whose persistence since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic both state and nationwide has health experts concerned.

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health, said in a Tuesday press conference that the percentage of reported Ohio kindergartners that met all vaccination requirements dipped slightly and remains below the ideal rate for herd immunity from vaccine-preventable diseases like measles.

Data from the department shows a decrease from 86.5% in the 2022-2023 school year to 86.2% in the 2023-2024 school year. The numbers first began falling in the 2020-2021 school year, when the percentage dropped sharply from 89.9% in the 2019-2020 school year to 86.5%.

The lowest overall since 2019 was reported in the 2021-2022 school year, with a reported 85.6% of reported kindergarteners fully vaccinated. For the best chance at herd immunity, vaccine rates should be around 90%, health officials said.

Vanderhoff lamented in Tuesday's press conference that state experts were hopeful that this year's numbers would rebound like in 2022-2023, "really the first school year that we emerged from the pandemic."

But "that just hasn't happened," he said.

Lower rates due to pandemic restrictions, lack of fear, expert says

Dr. Paul Offit, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania who joined Vanderhoff at Tuesday's press conference, said that vaccination rates at first dropped due to people not wishing to gather at doctors' offices or hospitals in the height of the pandemic.

He also noted that thanks to vaccines doing what they were created for, the general population no longer sees diseases like polio, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases as a threat to their children's health. But prior to the 1963 measles vaccine, Offit pointed out, hundreds of people died from the disease, tens of thousands would be diagnosed with it and more than 1,000 experienced health defects like brain swelling.

"People were scared of measles, and I think we're not as scared now, which is unfortunate, but I hope we don't have to remember this disease by seeing it again," Offit said. "I think that's sort of where we're heading."

More: Is measles making a comeback in Ohio? Here's how many cases have been reported this year

Seven measles cases have already been reported in Ohio this year as of Tuesday, according to Vanderhoff. In 2022, Ohio reported 90 cases of measles in the state, with 85 originating from a central Ohio outbreak.

Nonmedical exemptions in Ohio above the national average

Data from the state health department also showed a record percentage of reported Ohio kindergarteners with a nonmedical or a "reason of conscience" or "religious" exemption to childhood vaccines, at 4% in the 2023-2024 school year, up from 2.6% in the 2019-2020 school year.

That's above the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, which sits at 3.2% for the 2022-2023 school year and has been rising since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

One factor is that many individuals balked against government mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine for both themselves and their children in order to participate in school, sporting events and other daily functions, and such an attitude more than likely spilled over into other vaccines Offit said.

"We leaned into this libertarian left hook which affected not just COVID vaccines but I think all vaccines," he said. "And then you see this sort of pushback on mandates in the political world."

Samantha Hendrickson is The Columbus Dispatch's medical business and health care reporter. She can be reached at shendrickson@dispatch.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Vaccination rates in Ohio kindergarteners drop, sparking concern in health experts