Routine childhood immunization coverage continues to decline among U.S. kindergarten children, falling from 95% pre-pandemic (target coverage) to 94% in the 2020–21 school year, with It has dropped to a new low of 93% for the 2022 school year. According to a new analysis released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Georgina Peacock, director of the CDC’s Division of Immunization Services, said at a press conference on Thursday that a 2% decline “may not sound very significant, but nearly 250,000 kindergarten children have contracted measles. It means that they may not be protected,” he added. rice field.
Peacock and other health experts at the briefing attribute the continued decline to a variety of factors. Pandemic-related disruptions, such as missed. There are also data suggesting barriers to access for children living below the poverty line or in rural areas. And vaccine misinformation and disinformation continues to play a role, as it did years before the pandemic.
Exemption
In the past few years, when officials have seen vaccination rates drop due to anti-vaccine rhetoric, they have also seen a corresponding increase in exemptions from school vaccination requirements. But CDC officials don’t see that in the current data. Although exemption rates rose slightly from last year (0.4 percentage points), the main driver of the overall decline in vaccination coverage was lack of vaccination and lack of exemption eligibility to explain why. A significant increase in the number of children. Lack of shots.
Shannon Stokley, deputy director of the CDC’s Division of Immunization Services, told reporters that the reduction will provide parents with a grace period to keep their children up to date on vaccines and immunization forms. He said it could be due to pandemic-related school policies that offered other flexibility. school.
This could mean that vaccination coverage could recover with little effort from the health community as America continues to struggle to move forward from the pandemic. But CDC officials also noted that prevalent anti-vaccine sentiment around the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine may have spilled over into routine childhood immunizations, making full recovery less likely. I admit it.
“There has been some hesitation with vaccines during the pandemic, but I think it is mainly related to COVID vaccines, which in some cases could lead to routine vaccinations,” he said. Peacock said. “It’s something we’re looking very closely at,” she added, adding that the main way to deal with vaccine hesitancy is trusting parents to discuss their concerns about vaccines. It is aimed at health care providers.
