Thousands of US kindergartners unvaccinated without waivers

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

States are heatedly debating whether to make it more difficult for students to avoid vaccinations for religious or philosophical reasons amid the worst measles outbreak in decades, but schoolchildren using such waivers are outnumbered in many states by those who give no excuse at all for lacking their shots.

A majority of unvaccinated or undervaccinated kindergartners in at least 10 states were allowed to enroll provisionally for the last school year, without any formal exemption, according to data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 27 states submitted information about the group, so the true size of the problem is unknown.

Poor access to health care keeps some children from getting inoculated against some of the most preventable contagious diseases, but for others, the reasons are more mundane. “It could just be, ‘I didn’t have time to go to the doctor,’ or ‘I just don’t want to do this,’” said Melissa Arnold, CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Ohio chapter. “From a public health standpoint, we don’t know.”

Experts say it’s likely that many or even most of those children ultimately get all their vaccinations, as state laws require, but no one knows for sure. It’s neither tracked nor required to be.

That leaves officials with a maddening lack of information as vaccination rates inch downward and diseases such as measles, once declared eradicated, re-emerge.

The CDC has called on education officials to do more to ensure that those children get vaccinated, and state health and education departments routinely issue reminders. But for school officials, complying with state mandates that require children be vaccinated in order to attend class can sometimes require choosing between educating students and safeguarding public health.

“At the heart of our purpose is to have children in school; that’s our role as school nurses,” said Kate King, a board member at the Ohio Association of School Nursing. “We don’t want to exclude them. So that’s our dilemma.”

All 50 states allow students to receive exemptions from vaccinations for medical reasons. But formal vaccine exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons have recently come under fire as the CDC has confirmed 880 measles cases in 24 states since January, the greatest number since 1994.

Of the 27 states that reported data on that group for the 2017-18 school year, Arkansas had the highest percentage of kindergarten students enrolled without complete vaccinations and without invoking a medical, religious or philosophical exemption, according to the CDC. In Ohio, that figure was 5.3 percent, the second highest.