CDC report shows vaccine rates falling for kindergartners

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a report showing the vaccine rate for kindergartners is falling, while exemptions are on the rise.

Will Humble, Executive Director at the Arizona Public Health Association, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss these findings and why this decline is happening.

Arizona is now at 88.6% for MMR for kindergarteners, which ranks us 40th in the nation. The vaccination rate needed for herd immunity is 95%.

Humble said for about 15 years now, we’ve gotten around 1/2% worse each year, and this year is no exception as we’ve become 0.6% worse.

Contributing to the decrease in vaccinations, Humble said, is that the generation of people who experienced the diseases real time are fading away.

“That scared factor that my mom’s generation had, is not present with this new generation,” Humble said. “The reason there’s no illnesses is because we’ve been vaccinating for decades.”

According to Humble, the problem is not accessibility to vaccinations. Part of the issue comes down to school requirements. States like Mississippi rank high in vaccination rates because they only allow medical exemptions in schools; however, in Arizona, personal exemptions are also accepted for students.

Arizona does not reach herd immunity, but, vaccination rates vary among counties. While Santa Cruz county is above 95% in their MMR vaccination rate, counties like Yavapai and Mohave are at the 70% level. According to Humble, there are also differences among the different types of schools.

“There’s also a thing where you see public school kids have pretty good vaccination rates. Charter school kids, and the private school kids, have much lower vaccination rates,” Humble said.

According to Humble, the CDC typically releases a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report which includes a summarization of the data. Now, vaccination rate reports are only released in a spreadsheet.

“They’re not advertising vaccines these days,” Humble said.