Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 5
Vaccination rates among kindergarten children against potentially deadly diseases such as polio, measles and diphtheria fell in the 2021-2022 school year, extending the previous year’s slide from pre-pandemic levels, a U.S. government study showed on Thursday.
The fall in rates for the four most commonly required childhood vaccines reflects the disruption caused by COVID-19 on healthcare and the need to restore vaccination coverage to pre-pandemic levels, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said of the data it collected.
Overall, those receiving state-required vaccinations declined to about 93% last year, down from 94% in the previous school year and 95% in the 2019-2020 school year, according to the CDC report.
With a vaccination rate of 93.5% specifically against measles – below the national target of 95% – roughly 250,000 kindergarten age children were potentially unprotected against the disease, CDC said.
All U.S. states require the vaccine against measles and rubella and all but Iowa require a shots against mumps. All states also require the combined diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis shot and the vaccine against poliovirus, while 49 states require inoculations against varicella, or chickenpox.
Source: Reuters
