Most U.S. Kids Still Get Vaccinated, But Those Low-Vax Pockets Worry the CDC

By Kelly Faircloth  |  August 28, 2015 | 10:30pm
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Good news, bad news: most Kindergarten-aged kids in America are still getting all their shots. But the CDC continues to worry about those stubborn pockets with low rates of vaccination (and, presumably, high rates of uncooperative parents).

Reuters reports on the latest out of the Centers for Disease Control re: vaccination rates. Nationwide, just 1.7 percent of parents asked for an exemption in 2014. “Overall, the news is gratifying,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, according to the L.A. Times. “Though they may not always get the headlines, the overwhelming majority of parents continue to protect their children with recommended vaccinations.”

Schuchat pointed out that it was the high overall vaccination rate in America that prevented the Disney measles outbreak from getting any worse: “We were lucky in the U.S. We didn’t see large outbreaks in schools.”

But dig down into the numbers, and it gets bumpier:

Rates vary nationwide, however, with at least one state reporting over 6% of parents seeking exemptions, the study found.
“Pockets of children who miss vaccinations exist in our communities and they leave these communities vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters in a media briefing.

In case anyone’s interested, it was Idaho that took the prize for most exemptions, hitting 6.5 percent. Idaho’s prize is a painful rash and a month of quarantine.

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Photo via AP Images.

 
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