Last school year, fewer kindergartners were vaccinated, CDC says

Fewer American parents vaccinated their kindergartners as more sought exemptions from routine shots during the last school year, new data shows.

The figures – released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – follow trends since the COVID-19 pandemic with more parents foregoing children’s vaccines that have been instrumental in saving early lives . In turn, preventable diseases have resurfaced across the U.S.

The risks can be serious and even fatal for children, family members and others around them, said Dr. Georgina Peacock, director of CDC’s Immunization Services Division.

“As we are noting these declines in childhood vaccination, we are also seeing more communities experience outbreaks of measles and whooping cough across the U.S.,” she said in a statement. “Vaccination is the best way to prevent these outbreaks and their devastating impact on children.”

Routine vaccines are typically required to attend public schools unless you have an exemption. In the 2023-24 school year, the CDC reported the percentage of kindergartners who'd been vaccinated decreased for all reported vaccines. The two-dose measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is now at 92.7%, down from 95.2% during the 2019-20 school year.

At the same time, the percentage of kindergarteners with exemptions to at least one vaccine jumped to 3.3%, up from 3% in the 2022-23 year. Exemptions increased in 40 states and Washington, D.C. The percentage of children with exemptions in 14 states exceeded 5%.

Reaching at least 95% vaccination coverage in a community for diseases such as measles can prevent outbreaks, according to the CDC .

Health officials in North Carolina announced in September the state’s first measles case since 2018, of a child in Mecklenburg County who was likely exposed while outside the U.S. Rates for kindergartners in the state receiving the MMR vaccine have dipped to 93.8%. That trend is reflected in Mecklenburg, which includes Charlotte, where gradual declines in vaccination have been met with increases in outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Even a few unvaccinated people can have lasting effects in neighborhoods and schools.

“While it doesn't seem like a large number of students, we are seeing the resurgence of these outbreaks,” Raynard Washington, director of the Mecklenburg County Public Health Department, told USA TODAY. “It’s clear that lack of vaccine coverage is having an impact on the health of families and kids in our communities.”

Various factors affect these rising figures, he explained. One is people requesting exemptions, increasingly for non-medical reasons. Another, he said, is people making decisions based on disinformation they've received about vaccine safety. Yet another are families who are not up-to-date on vaccines due to a lack of access to health care.

Parents want what’s best for their children, said Dr. Octavio Ramilo, chair of the infectious diseases department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, Tennessee. However, younger parents may not have witnessed the devastation that vaccine-preventable infections once caused before the widespread use of vaccines, such as the brain swelling caused by measles or babies developing seizures after contracting whooping cough.

“We are preventing death and severe damage,” Ramilo told USA TODAY. “But I don't think we can sometimes explain that very well.”

A serious illness can happen to any healthy child or person around them who is unvaccinated, he added. In any classroom, there may be a pupil who is more susceptible due to underlying conditions that prevent them from getting vaccinated. That student could pay first, and perhaps most harshly.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Last school year, fewer kindergartners were vaccinated, CDC says