Measles Childhood Vaccinations In WI Lag Behind National Levels: CDC

WISCONSIN — The rate of vaccination for measles and other preventable childhood illnesses among Wisconsin's kindergarten-aged students lagged behind estimated national levels as more students in the state see exemptions, according to a study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wisconsin schools require students to be up-to-date on their vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR; diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis, or DTaP and Tdap; polio, varicella chickenpox, and Hepatitis B.

The study said 93.5 percent of kindergarteners across the country were estimated to be up-to-date on their measles vaccinations when they were enrolled for that school year, but that still left about 250,000 students nationwide unprotected against the disease, declared eradicated in the United States in 2000 because of vaccines developed in the 1950s.

Also in 2021-22, the report estimated 93.1 percent of kindergartners were current on DTaP vaccines and 93.5 percent were current on poliovirus vaccines. In states that require varicella vaccines to control chickenpox, 92.8 percent of students were up-to-date, the report estimated.

Last school year, about 2.6 percent of kindergarteners nationwide had exemptions to at least one of the vaccines for religious or other reasons, but 3.9 percent weren’t up-to-date amid what public health officials have previously warned is a growing tide of vaccine hesitancy.

In Wisconsin in the 2021-22 school year — based on a survey of 96.8 percent of the state’s 64,275 public school kindergarten-age students — At least 82.6 percent were current on MMR, DTaP, polio and varicella vaccinations.

Around 6.3 percent of the students received some type of exemption, a 1.1 percent increase over last year. A further 8.5 percent of students were listed as provisionally enrolled or within a grace period.

The slide nationally follows a similar one in 2020-21, when about 94 percent of students were protected against the diseases, a point below the national target of 95 percent vaccination rates.

Nine states and the District of Columbia, including Wisconsin, saw measles protection among incoming kindergarten students of less than 90 percent in 2021-22, according to the report.

Ohio is among them, with an MMR vaccination rate of 88.3 percent last year. An outbreak of measles in the Columbus area that began in November has sickened 83 people, the majority of them unvaccinated. Thirty-three people were hospitalized.

It’s a worrisome trend for health officials, who said that with that many unprotected children, clusters of outbreaks can occur, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. That last happened with the 2019 resurgence of measles in 31 states. In all, 1,274 cases were confirmed, the greatest number of measles cases reported in the United States since 1992. Most were in communities with clusters of unvaccinated people, according to the CDC.

There were 13 cases of measles in eight jurisdictions in 2020; 49 cases in five jurisdictions in 2021; and 118 cases in six jurisdictions in 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted both vaccinations and school administrators and nurses’ ability to track which students aren’t up-to-date on their shots. But decreased confidence in pediatric vaccines is also a likely contributor to the lower rates of protection, Dr. Georgina Peacock, the director of the CDC’s immunization division, told reporters Thursday.

“I think it’s a combination of all those things,” Peacock said.

Despite “a nearly complete return to in-person learning after COVID-19 pandemic-associated disruptions, immunization programs continued to report COVID-19–related impacts on vaccination assessment and coverage,” the report said.

“As schools return to in-person learning, high vaccination coverage is critical to continue protecting children and communities from vaccine-preventable diseases,” the researchers wrote in the study.

A survey last month from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly a third of U.S. parents oppose school vaccine requirements, saying the decision over childhood vaccinations should rest with them, even if it puts their children at risk of catching a serious illness. That’s up from an October 2019 Pew Research Center poll, when fewer than 20 percent felt that way, Kaiser noted.

“The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and debates over vaccine requirements and mandates appear to have had an impact on public attitudes towards MMR vaccine requirements for public schools,” Kaiser said.

Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and vice chair for community health at Washington University, told The Associated Press other physicians have told him parents are picking and choosing which vaccines their children should receive.

“It’s crazy,” Newland told the AP. “There’s so much work to be done.”

But even before the pandemic, vaccinations were a bitterly polarizing issue pitting public health officials and others in the medical professionals against so-called “anti-vaxxers,” who often cite religious freedom, personal objections and government overreach in their decisions to delay vaccinations or not immunize their children at all.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.