Vaccines For The Common Good

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported good news earlier this month: Routine immunization coverage against 14 vaccine-preventable diseases hasn’t changed very much for most infants and toddlers during the pandemic:

Vaccination coverage among young children has remained high and stable for most vaccines, although disparities persist. The National Immunization Survey–Child identified no decline overall in routine vaccination coverage associated with the COVID-19 pandemic among children born during 2018–2019, although declines were observed among children living below the federal poverty level and in rural areas.

 

Amanda D’Ambrosio examines the disparities:

Hill and colleagues did not detect any decreases in routine vaccine coverage among toddlers related to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the youngest children included in this analysis reached 2 years old. However, while vaccination rates have remained steady in recent years, there were still persistent — and in some cases, widening — disparities among children who resided in rural areas, came from lower-income families, did not have insurance, or who were in Black or Hispanic populations.

For example, vaccine coverage for the seven-vaccine series dropped 4 to 5 percentage points more among children who lived below the federal poverty level or in rural areas, with immunizations declining among kids in these two groups during the pandemic.

 

Overall, though, the news is still positive:

As far as the percentage of toddlers who have not received any vaccines, “that number is actually going down,” [Dr. Sean] O’Leary said. “So parents are still getting their children vaccinated, the vast majority are.”

The percentage of children who were completely unvaccinated was just under 1%, down about 0.4 percentage points from 2016-2o17.

 

Another study from the CDC this month reported news that wasn’t so good: The percentage of kindergarten students protected by routine vaccines fell during the pandemic:

During the 2020–21 school year, national coverage with state-required vaccines among kindergarten students declined from 95% to approximately 94%.

During the 2021–22 school year, coverage decreased again to approximately 93% for all state-required vaccines. The exemption rate remained low (2.6%). An additional 3.9% without an exemption were not up to date with measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Despite widespread return to in-person learning, COVID-19–related disruptions continued to affect vaccination coverage and assessment for the 2021–22 school year, preventing a return to prepandemic coverage.

 

We learned in November on The PediaBlog about how reduced acceptance of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) can have serious health consequences in children living in the U.S. and around the world. Pediatrician Rhea Boyd noticed the same thing we did last month:

Americans have been warned — again — about lax attention to routine vaccinations. This time the warning comes from measles, an age-old, vaccine-preventable disease, with an outbreak in central Ohio among nearly 80 children and counting, almost all of them unvaccinated against measles.

Once well-controlled in the U.S., which has maintained “measles elimination status” for almost 20 years, this disease may no longer be a rarity as millions of children in the U.S. are missing or behind on routine vaccinations. Globally, there were about 9 million measles infections and 128,000 deaths in 2021, and a record high of nearly 40 million children missing a vaccine dose last year.

 

Dr. Boyd identifies the usual suspects for declining vaccination rates:

A dangerous combination of pandemic fatigue, waning health literacy, and the unmitigated spread of health misinformation and disinformation are to blame. The inability of the U.S. government and the country’s underfunded national health care infrastructure to effectively and equitably educate the public about the risks of disease and benefits of vaccination have created a perfect storm for the reemergence of measles in Ohio and polio in New York.

 

It’s important to keep in mind that an overwhelming majority of parents make sure their kids are immunized completely and on time; vaccine refusal in America is very much the exception and not the rule.

Most parents recognize that vaccines protect not just their own children, but everyone else in the child’s home, school, and community, because everyone deserves to be healthy (even children with limited access to financial resources, medical care, or health insurance).

Most parents acknowledge the reality that modern vaccines are safe and effective in teaching their child’s immune system to defend them from nasty and often deadly viruses and bacteria, keeping them alive and healthy into adulthood.

Most parents know that when all is said and done, vaccinating their children is the right thing to do for the common good — for kids, for parents, for all of us.

 

source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/01/31/vaccines-for-the-common-good/