As I wrote recently, the pandemic has caused a drop in US vaccine rates for children born during that period. More data has recently shown that the vaccine rates for children entering school this past year have also dropped significantly. Moreover, there has also been a significant increase in exemptions to vaccinating children entering school.

Despite this recent drop, vaccination rates remain around 90%, so the bottom has not fallen out of protecting our children against deadly diseases. That being said, it is problematic that the US vaccine uptake rate has dropped below 95%, which is generally the level that public health can rely upon the herd effect. At this level, there is enough protection against vaccine-preventable diseases that they will not spread far.

This article will examine the current levels for each of the key vaccines recommended by the CDC for children entering school and the rate of exemptions.

School-entry vaccine and exemption rates

According to the CDC’s SchoolVaxView data, the US median share of children with non-medical exemptions to vaccine requirements rose from 2.0% in 2017-18 to 3.7% in 2023-24. That means that the exemption rate has nearly doubled.

This is probably a result of the COVID vaccine false narratives that have been pushed by people like Robert F Kennedy Jr over the past four years. Although there has not been a thorough examination of the increasing exemption rates, it appears that people who have refused the COVID vaccine are also keeping their children from getting vaccines that have long been mandated for children entering school

Approximately 92.7% of kindergartners got their required shots — DTaP vaccine (for Diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis), hepatitis A vaccine, MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella), poliovirus vaccine, and varicella vaccine (for chickenpox). Before the COVID-19 pandemic the vaccination rate was 95%, the coverage level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

Below are the trends over the past seven years for each of the vaccines recommended for children entering school.

DTaP vaccine

Hepatitis A vaccine

MMR vaccine

Polio vaccine

Chickenpox vaccine

Summary

I realize that some of the drops in vaccine rates appear to be small, in the 2-4% range, but they are troubling since they mean that there is a concurrent drop in herd immunity. And that means an increased risk of diseases that have not been a concern to public health officials for years.

Measles cases are starting to creep up. The first case of polio in years appeared in 2022 — we do not want polio outbreaks every summer like we experienced seventy years ago before the first polio vaccine became available.

One of the ways to increase the vaccination rate is to have stiffer vaccine mandate rules and laws in place. For example, California has one of the toughest laws that has reduced the non-medical exemption rate to around 0.1%. In the past, keeping tough vaccine school mandates was a public health policy. Unfortunately, in today’s America, it is a political problem, with more liberal people in favor of vaccines and the more conservative generally against it.

Despite all of these problems, I am encouraged that the vaccination rate has not dropped to as low as I feared. Given all of the anti-vaccine claims about the COVID and other vaccines, I was sure that the 2023-24 vaccine rates would be below 90%.

However, the fact that vaccination rates have slowly declined every year since the pandemic, and newborn vaccination rates are also falling, there could be a point in the near future when the overall rate falls below 90%. And then dangerous and deadly diseases return. We don’t want that.

I am cautiously optimistic about the vaccination rate. But I could be easily convinced to be wildly pessimistic if the drop in vaccine rates continues over the next two years.