Share of Kindergartners Exempt From Vaccination Rises

The proportion of US kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, health officials said Thursday. More parents are questioning routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect of the political schism that emerged during the pandemic around COVID-19 vaccines, experts say. Even though more kids were given exemptions, the AP reports, the national vaccination rate held steady: 93% of kindergarteners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year, the same as the year before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The bad news is that it's gone down since the pandemic and still hasn't rebounded," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. "The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule." All US states and territories require that children attending child care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough, and chickenpox. All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the past decade, the percentage of kindergarteners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has inched up, lifting the overall exemption rate from 1.6% in the 2011-12 school year to 3% last year. Last year, more than 115,000 kindergartners were exempt from at least one vaccine, the CDC estimated. The rates vary across the country, per the AP. Ten states—all in the West or Midwest— reported that more than 5% of kindergartners were exempted from at least one kind of required vaccine. Idaho had the highest percentage, with 12% of kindergartners receiving at least one exemption. In contrast, 0.1% had exemptions in New York.

(More vaccinations stories.)