Growing hesitancy about vaccines fuels resurgence of measles, chickenpox in US

“That’s why this epidemic is spreading like wildfire,” said Columbus Health Director Mysheika Roberts.

The Ohio outbreak, which began in November, comes at a time of growing concern about the public health impact of the disease. anti-vaccine sentiment, This is a long-standing problem that has resulted in declining childhood immunization rates across the United States.The pandemic is controversial and Politicization over coronavirus vaccine When Mandatory vaccination at school.

More than a third of parents with children under the age of 18 and 28% of all adults say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). increase. Attending public schools can pose health risks to others if they remain unimmunized. new vote Courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care research organization.

Jen Cates, senior vice president at Kaiser, said public opinion on vaccine mandates has grown significantly since the pandemic. His 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center found that less than a quarter of his parents and 16% of all adults opposed mandatory vaccinations in schools. I was.

According to the Kaiser survey, the rise in opposition is largely due to changes among those who identify as or lean toward Republicans, with 44% saying their parents It says we need to be able to opt out of childhood vaccines. That’s more than double the 20% who felt that way in 2019.

Adam Moore, a father of three children who live in a suburb of Detroit, said his children, aged 9, 12 and 17, attend private schools, not to mention coronavirus and flu vaccines, as well as childhood routines. He said he had not received any vaccinations. He respects individual freedom and says the government has no right to tell people what to do with their bodies.

“I think it’s a tough argument to say that the government supports individual liberties in terms of abortion rights and everything else, but when it comes to vaccinations, it’s like ‘my body, my choice’. No,” said Moore, 43, an account manager at a marketing firm.

Moore, who describes himself as a Republican, said he didn’t think about children’s diseases like measles and measles. recent relapses of polio, as a threat. But if the deadly Ebola virus is spreading, he said he wants his children vaccinated.

Other parents who oppose mandatory vaccinations in schools reflect years of misinformation about vaccines that continue to spread through anti-vaccine groups.

Bianca Hernandez, a 37-year-old dog breeder in the Albuquerque metropolitan area, expressed concern about the relationship between vaccine ingredients and autism. widely disprovedShe said her two youngest children have religious exemptions from the school’s vaccination requirements.

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Support for mandatory vaccinations remains steady among Democrats, with 88% saying their children need to be vaccinated to attend public school.

Overall, 71% of all adults support vaccination requirements in schools, compared to 82% in 2019.

“The growing negative sentiment towards childhood vaccination is worrying,” said Saad Omar, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and an infectious disease expert who studies vaccination hesitancy. It should, but in absolute terms, vaccines remain the social norm.”

Ann Zink, chief medical officer of the Alaska Department of Health, said even in states with historically low vaccination rates, childhood vaccination rates have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. In the years before the pandemic, approximately 65% ​​of children aged 19 to 35 months in Alaska had completed routine childhood immunizations. By the end of 2021, 46% had.

“I think there is more distrust of the government. There are more questions about vaccines, making it harder to get people vaccinated.”

A few weeks ago, Zink, an emergency room doctor, saw her first case. chicken pox When a young woman walked into Palmer’s Matsusou Regional Medical Center, she was covered in large, painful lesions. .

“I was like, ‘Well, if we all choose to be vaccinated, which isn’t really the case, you haven’t been vaccinated and your family hasn’t been vaccinated.’ Chickenpox was spreading in your area and now you’re really sick,” Zink recalls.

In the past, Zink has said: Herd immunity would have protected A woman against such a child’s disease. But as her anti-vaccine sentiment grows, her protection is waning, she said.

to keep it away To push vaccination out of the current political narrative, Alaska’s health department recently brought back images and words from polio vaccination propaganda from the 1960s. New social media campaign uses vintage Welby Cartoons and rockets — “Get a booster!” — remind people that vaccinations have always been part of the nation’s history.

Federal data typically lags by about two years, so it is too early to see the impact of declining public support for school immunization requirements on childhood immunization rates. Routine during pandemic Decreased vaccination rates Schools were closed and children stopped going to the doctor.

Growing negative attitudes towards vaccination requirements in schools are troubling health workers. Kentucky official Urging Flu Vaccination After 6 Kids — No One Has Been Vaccinated — died after getting the flu.South Carolina officials also Promoting early childhood immunization rear 2 outbreaks of chickenpox Nearly 70 people were affected in March, the first since 2020.

case of paralytic polio This summer, concerns were raised about low childhood vaccination rates and increasing vaccine misinformation among New York men. Decades after vaccination eradicated the disease in the United States, the disease could return to epidemics as a result.

Jennifer Heath, immunization program coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Health, who works on vaccine hesitation and outreach, said: “Part of it is a real attitude change. But part of it is a disconnect with primary care providers telling you that vaccines are important.”

Immunization requirements in schools are one of the most effective tools for keeping children healthy. All states and the District of Columbia require children to be immunized against certain diseases, such as measles, polio, and whooping cough, and to attend public schools.all states Grant of exemption on medical grounds.more and more permits Religious or philosophical exemptions.

DC also requires students over the age of 12 to be vaccinated against covid-19, delay the implementation of the mandate Until the 2023-2024 school year.California has pending statewide student coronavirus vaccine mandate This will come into effect from July 2023 onwards. almost two dozen The state has some form of ban on mandatory coronavirus vaccines for students.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children get 2 doses of MMR vaccine, The first dose is given when the child is 12 to 15 months old, and the second dose is given between the ages of 4 to 6 years. His single dose of the vaccine is about 93% effective in preventing measles, his one of the most contagious pathogens on the planet, which can cause serious complications, including death. . Two doses are about 97% protective.

State data showed that only 3 of 81 children in the Ohio measles outbreak received one dose of the vaccine. It was not known to be fully vaccinated.

“I think some of these attitudes were here before the pandemic, and then they used to be open to vaccines, but as a result of what happened with the coronavirus vaccine, they are becoming more critical of them. We may have featured additional community members who might have been,” Roberts said. He said.

Roberts said some cases occurred in the large Somali community of Columbus, which has the second largest Somali population in the United States after the Minneapolis area. She said she had “deliberately delayed” giving her children the measles vaccine. considerable research Disprove the link between vaccines and autism. These fears mirror similar concerns of parents in Minnesota’s Somali community. 2017 measles epidemic Seventy-five children were infected, most of them unvaccinated preschool children.

Minnesota is also battling a new measles outbreak (22 cases) as vaccine hesitation over the MMR vaccine continues to be a problem, said Doug Schultz, spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Health. said.

At least 29 children in Ohio have been hospitalized, some requiring intensive care. Some children are seriously ill.

According to Columbus officials, most of the sick children — 78 percent — are black, 6 percent Asian, 6 percent white, and 4 percent Hispanic.

Because the measles virus is highly contagious, infectious disease experts say a vaccination coverage of around 90-94% across the region is needed to prevent the virus from causing an outbreak. in the United States, Nearly 91% of children In the Columbus area, measles vaccination coverage is estimated at 80 to 90 percent, Roberts said, but health care providers are not required to report data to Ohio’s vaccine registry.

Even with high infection rates throughout the region, measles can easily spread among herds of unvaccinated or unvaccinated people. According to Roberts, the outbreak in Columbus was caused by one of her or two of him not being vaccinated, traveling from June to October to a country where measles was still endemic, and finding a way to prevent infection within the community. It started with infecting other people with

In recent years, many of the measles cases reported to the CDC have occurred in close-knit, unimmunized communities where anti-vaccine misinformation gained a foothold. In 2019, the United States reported the highest number of annual measles cases in more than 25 years (1,294). Three-quarters of of these cases occurred in New York State Orthodox Jew community.Outbreaks have also occurred between Amish of Ohio and Eastern European groups Pacific Northwest.

Ohio health officials have worked closely with communities in Somalia to increase vaccination coverage without stigmatizing them. Columbus public health workers host vaccine clinics at community centers and mosques, We are doing home visits to provide shots. They also reached out to schools, daycare centers and grocery stores about the importance of vaccination.

Hard work seems to make a difference.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus recently saw a 20% increase in parent requests for the MMR vaccine, Roberts said. In the health sector, immunizations have also increased slightly.

“Slowly but surely,” she said.