Data released this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding kindergarten students during the 2024-2025 school year revealed that vaccination rates for children have again slipped. The rate of children with an exemption reached an “all-time high”, per the Associated Press.
According to the CDC, exemptions increased in 36 states and Washington D.C., with 17 states reporting exemptions exceeding 5%. A data table provided by the centers showed that the share of children with a non-medical exemption has skyrocketed since the 2020-2021 school year, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak.
“During the 2024-2025 school year, exemptions from one or more vaccines among kindergartners in the U.S. increased to 3.6% from 3.3% the year before,” the CDC said.
Gallup polling from last August, around the time the 2024-2025 school year began for many students, found that “fewer Americans” considered childhood vaccines to be important. Just 40% said it was extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019 and 64% in 2001.
“What happens with vaccines is they’re sort of a victim of their own effectiveness, right?” said with Dr. Eric Ball, head of the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in an interview with Audacy this summer. “So, most people have never seen someone with measles. Most people now have never see someone with diphtheria, with meningitis.”
This year, noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also became the leader of the country’s Health and Human Services Department. Kennedy has made some controversial moves regarding vaccines, including a call for placebo testing that caused concern among experts and an announcement that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.
Overall, the CDC found that vaccination coverage among kindergartners in the U.S. decreased for all reported vaccines from the year before during the 2024-2025 school year, per the CDC data. It ranged from 92.1% for diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP) to 92.5% for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) and polio vaccine.
“Coverage with MMR, DTaP, poliovirus vaccine (polio), and varicella vaccine (VAR) decreased in more than half of states, compared with coverage the year before,” said the CDC.
According to Ball, a rate of about 95% is needed to prevent transmission of measles. He also noted that once infected with the virus, patients can become very sick and a vulnerable to multiple complications.
As of this Tuesday, there were 1,333 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. with the majority (66%) impacting people under the age of 19 and 92% of cases occurring in people who were either unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status, according to the CDC. There have been three confirmed deaths from the disease, which had been considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 due to successful vaccination efforts, per the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“It’s been a travesty and a tragedy that we are seeing not only a record number of measles cases in the United States, but we’ve also had three deaths, including the deaths of two healthy children in the United States,” said Dr. Ball.
He explained that the outbreaks (there are now 29 reported measles outbreaks in the nation and cases in 40 jurisdictions) began with an outbreak in a small Mennonite population in Texas where the vaccine rates were extremely low. Although he is known for being a vaccine skeptic, even Kennedy recommended that people get vaccinated for measles amid the growing outbreaks.
“This is not a normal thing,” said Ball of the measles outbreaks. “Before this year, we didn’t have someone die of measles in this country for decades.”
Recent polls have shown that most U.S. parents support vaccination for preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella but are confused about COVID-19 vaccination protocols.
Results of a poll by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation released in June indicated that 79% of U.S. adults said parents should be required to have children vaccinated against preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella to attend school. Those results also found that that majorities of Democrats (90%) and Republicans (68%) and MAGA Republicans (66%) agreed on the matter.
New poll results released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that “many parents of children under age 18 are confused and uncertain about whether COVID-19 vaccines are recommended for healthy children this year.” Nearly half (48%) said they didn’t know if federal agencies recommend healthy children get the vaccine this fall, 31% said they didn’t think it was recommended for healthy children and 21% said the did think it was recommended.