SUMMARY: As families prepare for the school year and summer vacations, health officials emphasize the importance of vaccinations to prevent diseases like measles, polio, and tetanus. Dr. Atul Grover highlights a concerning drop in national immunization rates from 95% to 93%, potentially increasing the risk for 750,000 children. With cases of measles rising, he urges parents to vaccinate their kids before school starts. Vaccination not only protects children but also reduces illness spread to adults. Dr. Grover recommends consulting pediatricians for vaccination schedules and emphasizes that many vaccines can be administered together for convenience.

While families gear up for last-minute summer vacations and children head back to school for the 2024-25 school year, health officials are urging parents and guardians to remain vigilant against vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, polio, tetanus and others.
According to new guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, overall vaccination rates amongst kindergarteners remains at its lowest level in decades, having declined nationally from 95 to 93 percent during the two school years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. These lower rates include immunizations against many preventable but dangerous diseases, including measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), whooping cough, and polio. This also comes at a time when influenza vaccination coverage has dropped significantly for young learners, and the United States is experiencing an uptick in measles cases, as well as a summer surge in COVID-19 cases driven by new variants of the virus.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the drop in MMR vaccine coverage among U.S. kindergartners has put roughly 250,000 kindergartners at risk each year for the last three years. Individual state MMR vaccine rates for kindergartners tell an even more concerning story with vaccination ranging from 81% to 98%. As of July 11th, cases of measles – a highly contagious disease that was eradicated in 2000 through vaccinations – were reported by 24 states. Almost half of those cases were children under 5 years old and 87% of cases were discovered in people who were unvaccinated.
As of July 9, the CDC reported that COVID-19 infections are growing in 45 states, stable or uncertain in 3 states and declining in zero. In 2023, more than 916,300 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19 and more than 75,500 people died from COVID-19. During the 2023-2024 flu season, more than 44,900 people are estimated to have died from flu complications. The updated COVID-19 and flu vaccines are now updated on an annual basis and should be available in the fall.

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