The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released two new reports, which both state that most children in the US are now getting vaccinated.
Both papers were published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) by the agency.
The first report focused on the scope of vaccination coverage, as well as the vaccine exemption levels of children, who are about to be enrolled in a kindergarten class for the school year 2014-2015. The authors found that although the exemption levels of the participants stayed low as per the national degree, the exemption levels in the state exhibited varying ranges. The state level had a median rate of 1.7 percent while the national data ranged from less than 0.1 percent in Mississippi to as high as 6.5 percent in Idaho. The report also said that there were five states that did not qualify for giving exemption information, in terms of meeting the standards of reporting.
The second paper looked into the immunization rates of children aged 19 months to 35 months for the period of 2014. The percentage of vaccination coverage exhibited continuous high rates at more than 90 percent for the polio, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), varicella and hepatitis B vaccines. The investigators also discovered that alongside these impeccable vaccination findings, the percentage of children who were not administered with vaccines stayed at low levels, showing only less than one percent.
"Collaborative efforts are the reason our nation has been able to achieve such high coverage nationally," says Anne Schuchat, MD, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the CDC. However, she stressed that further interventions are still warranted to protect communities and academic institutions from potential disease outbreaks.
More and more states have participated in the collation of these data. According to the report, the states that provided vaccination data in the investigation rose from 18 in 2013 to 21 in 2014. The availability of these data to the public is said to boost the information delivered to parents, enhance the formulation of vaccination protocols and fortify various immunization programs.
Communicable diseases can spread very rapidly in a community with very few vaccinated individuals. With this, the CDC said that the vaccination coverage rates must remain high in order to provide what is called herd immunity, or the immunity developed by the entire community. This may be achieved by encouraging parents to ensure that their children strictly follow immunization schedules so that they may be more protected from outbreaks such as measles.
Photo: Quinn Dombrowski | Flickr
