A small but growing mealtime outbreak in central Ohio has gotten sick at least 77 childrenalmost all under the age of 5. The vast majority are unvaccinated or have received only one of two recommended doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, according to City of Columbus Public Health.
More than a third of the children were hospitalized.
The epidemic, the largest in the United States since 2019comes as resistance to school vaccination requirements spreads across the country.
Friday, the Kaiser Family Foundation published data showing that 28% of adults surveyed this summer were against vaccination requirements for children entering kindergarten, up from 16% in 2019.
The percentage of parents who said they were against vaccination requirements at school was even higher. This year, 35% of parents surveyed said it should be up to mothers and fathers to get their children vaccinated, up from 23% in 2019.
“It’s a pretty substantial change in three years,” said Lunna Lopes, senior polling analyst for KFF’s public opinion and polling research team.
The main driver of the increase has been the debate over vaccination mandates during the pandemic, Lopes said. The survey did not suggest that people had stopped believing in the need for vaccines; rather, the change reflected a change in attitude toward vaccination requirements for attending school.
“It was the controversies and the climate of Covid vaccines and vaccine mandates that had an impact,” Lopes said.
Tens of thousands of children across the United States have already fallen behind on vaccinations diseases like measleschickenpox or even polio, a trend that has been bubbling for years but has accelerated during the pandemic.
Missed medical appointments in the early years of Covid contributed to a drop in childhood vaccination rates, but that’s the onslaught of vaccine misinformation which continues to put young children at risk of preventable death and disease, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC News.
“When I think about the challenges we have for public health, vaccine misinformation is one of the biggest threats,” she said.
The CDC is expected to release new data on childhood vaccination rates early next year. In its latest report, the number of fully immunized children entering kindergarten in the fall of 2020 decreased by 1% compared to the previous year.
It’s not just routine vaccinations that have taken a hit.
Only 42% of children under 18 have been vaccinated against the flu this year, according to CDC data. And the American Academy of Pediatrics said the vast majority of children aged 4 and under – 90% – have not received the updated Covid vaccine.
The drop in vaccinations has drawn attention to communities that remain susceptible to otherwise rare diseases. Although the national decrease of 1% seems small, the declines have been larger in some states. Immunizations for children fell by 13% in Washington. In Alabamasome vaccinations have been cut by more than half from pre-pandemic rates.
There needs to be a very high level of immunity in the population to keep highly contagious diseases like measles at bay, said Dr. Buddy Creech, pediatrician and director of the vaccine research program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. in Nashville, Tennessee.
The best example is measlesCreech said.
The measles vaccine, given once around age 1 and again at age 5, is extraordinarily effective, preventing 97% of cases. Due to widespread vaccination efforts, the virus was considered eliminated in the United States in 2000.
Walensky fears that people will no longer feel measles, which killed about 128,000 people world in 2021, is a real threat.
“We have suffered the consequences of our own successes,” she said.
More news on childhood vaccination
The CDC has sent teams to Ohio and other under-vaccinated areas of the country that have experienced this Vaccine preventable disease.
“Here in Ohio, we have pretty active anti-vaccine groups,” said Tara Smith, professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health. “I’m really worried that it’s something that’s taking root more and more here.”
Walensky said once a parent is frightened by false or inaccurate claims about vaccine risks, it’s hard to quell that fear, even with facts.
“As moms, we know the biggest strength is trying to protect your kids,” she said.
One of the biggest hurdles is communicating with parents who, based on rumors or false informationreally believe that vaccines cause harm.
“It’s not because they want to hurt their child or they don’t care enough to seek out the best information,” Creech said. “It’s that they’ve received information, sometimes from what appears to be a credible source, it’s just not true.”
Who is the “voice of trust”?
Even as pediatricians like Creech and public health officials attempt to navigate a “mole swoop” strategy to combat anti-vaccine rumors and twisted facts, the CDC has no intention of creating a department within the agency with the sole purpose of fighting vaccines Misinformation is front-end, Walensky said.
Walensky, an infectious disease physician with more than two decades of experience, admits that she, as CDC directormay not be the best person to communicate about vaccine safety.
“I may not be the voice of trust,” she said. “National-level messaging will not necessarily reach under-immunized and unimmunized communities.”
The best way to break down vaccine misinformation (false or inaccurate information) and disinformation (which occurs when people spread rumors or hoaxes about vaccines to create fear) is to use already established trusted people in communities, including local health officials, paediatricians and even pastors. said Smith.
“There’s no single message that can do that,” she said. “We need everyone on deck.”
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