Parents' growing resistance to routine immunizations for their children is leading to a resurgence of diseases such as measles and chickenpox that can be prevented through the use of vaccines that have been around for decades health officials are warning, pointing to a growing measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, that has infected 81 children.
Officials said most of the children are old enough to have had their shots, but their parents chose not to have them immunized, and Mysheika Roberts, the director of the Columbus Health Department says "that is what is causing this outbreak to spread like wildfire," reports The Washington Post.
Ohio's outbreak started in November and comes as health officials worry about the consequences of the anti-vaccine sentiment that has grown after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and demands for school vaccine mandates.
According to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than a third of parents with children under the age of 18 and 28% of all adults say parents should decide on vaccinating children against measles, mumps, and rubella so they can attend public schools.
Jen Kates, a Kaiser senior vice president, said the public sentiment against vaccine mandates has grown in the past two years. However, in 2019, the year before the pandemic began, a Pew Research Center Poll said fewer than 25% and 16% of all adults at that time opposed vaccination requirements in schools.
Most of the opposition appears to be among Republicans, the Kaiser poll found, with 44% saying parents should be able to reject vaccines for their children, up from 20% in 2019.
Some parents, though, cite misinformation they hear through anti-vaccine groups, including concerns that have been disproven linking ingredients in vaccines and autism.
Democrats have held steady on school vaccine mandates, with 88% saying that children should be vaccinated when attending public schools to minimize risks of spreading diseases, the Kaiser study found, also reporting that overall, 71% of all adults continue to support school shot requirements.
Those numbers, though, have dropped since 2019, when 82% supported the mandates, the survey said.
Several other states are also experiencing historically low vaccination rates. For example, in Alaska, about 65% of children between the ages of 19 to 35 months completed the childhood vaccine schedule, in the years before the pandemic, but those numbers dropped to 46%, according to Anne Zink, chief medical officer for Alaska's health department.
In Kentucky, officials are urging people to get flu shots after six children died from influenza, and in South Carolina, officials are promoting childhood vaccines after chickenpox outbreaks in March sickened almost 70 people. The outbreaks were the first since 2020.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the recommendation is for children to get two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine, with the first dose at 12 to 15 months, and the second dose between the ages of 4 and 6. One dose of MMR vaccine is about 93% effective in preventing measles, which can lead to death, while 2 doses are the most effective, at 97%.
But in the Ohio outbreak, just 3 of the 81 children who caught measles got a single dose of the MMR vaccine and none were fully vaccinated.
Roberts said in recent weeks, though, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus has seen a 20% increase in the number of parents seeking the MMR vaccine for their children, and the health department has seen some increase in people getting the shots.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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