The percentage of school-aged American children who’ve received routine childhood vaccines, while still high, has dropped again during the past school year, a new government report says.
The report, released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), looked at the coverage rates of four vaccines mandated by state and local school entry requirements, including measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines; the diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines; and vaccines against poliovirus (polio) and varicella (chickenpox).
During the 2021–2022 school year, according to the report, the coverage among kindergarten children was approximately 93 percent nationwide for each of the four vaccines. It was around 94 percent during the 2020–2021 school year, and 95 percent during the 2019–2020 school year, when children were vaccinated before the COVID-19 pandemic….