Michigan reports a drop in child vaccination rates as students return to school

As Michigan’s K-12 students return to school this fall, state vaccination data shows that many of them are at an increased risk of spreading contagious diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox.

Between 2015 and 2023, the number of Michigan elementary schools with kindergarten vaccination rates below 70% increased from 86 to 109. The number of Michigan middle schools with seventh grade vaccination rates below 70% more than doubled during those same years, from 48 to 110.

These figures are well below the 95% guideline that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies as a key component for protecting a community against disease. With this many unvaccinated children together in school buildings, public health officials are concerned that preventable diseases may begin to spread, particularly to members of vulnerable populations such as pregnant mothers or infants who are too young to receive vaccines.

“When rates in a community decline, that’s when everyone is put at risk,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, during an Aug. 27 press briefing in which she urged parents to get their children vaccinated.

Michigan vaccination rates began to drop at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, when people were unable to see their primary care doctors, Bagdasarian said, but rates continued to fall as vaccine misinformation and disinformation began circulating.

Although state law requires parents of kindergartners, seventh graders or transfer students to submit proof that their child has received specific vaccinations when enrolling them in school, vaccine waivers have been on the rise since 2021. Parents have the option to provide schools with documentation certifying that they want vaccine requirements to be waived for their children for religious, medical or philosophical reasons.

In 2023, overall immunization waiver rates grew to 5.7% — the highest since 2013 — and almost all waivers were for nonmedical reasons, according to state data. Private schools saw a higher number of waivers and lower vaccination rates than public schools.

Vaccination rates are even lower for children aged 19-36 months. As of July 2024, vaccination rates for this age group have fallen below 70% in more than half of the state.

Veronica McNally helps educate the public on the importance of vaccinations as the president of the Franny Strong Foundation and founder of the I Vaccinate campaign. In 2012, she lost her 12-week-old daughter, Francesca Marie, to whooping cough.

“We know these diseases can spread quickly, and sometimes they can have devastating consequences,” McNally said. “Vaccine-preventable diseases are still a threat, and vaccinations are our best protection against them.”

There has been a resurgence of measles cases both in Michigan and nationally, after the disease had been declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. So far in 2024, Michigan has reported seven measles cases. Bagdasarian said that about half of the cases have been children, and some have been in people who had traveled out of state. The vast majority of measles cases occur in people who are unvaccinated. Measles symptoms can include high fever and rash, and the disease can sometimes be fatal.

Bagdasarian emphasized that safe and effective vaccines have kept communities safe for generations.

“In many cases, these are the same vaccines that we got as children and that, in some cases, our parents got when they were children,” she said. “And there are diseases that have been eliminated and that have really declined that could return if we don’t take action.”