{"id":216357,"date":"2025-09-10T20:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T20:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/216357\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T20:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T20:10:10","slug":"school-vaccination-rates-declining-in-san-diego-county-nbc-7-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/216357\/","title":{"rendered":"School vaccination rates declining in San Diego County \u2013 NBC 7 San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than two-thirds of American counties that collect data on kindergarten measles vaccinations no longer have herd immunity against the disease, and 77% of those counties have seen a decline in immunization rates since 2019. That\u2019s the alarming analysis of school vaccination rates by the NBC News Health &amp; Medical Unit in collaboration with Stanford University.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s in contrast to the picture in California. NBC 7 Investigates reviewed data from the Department of Public Health, which shows state laws have largely been successful in ensuring children get the vaccines required for them to attend public and private schools in person. However, the data also reveals declines in the percentage of kindergartners who have all their vaccines.<\/p>\n<p>To attend any in-person instruction at a school in California with at least six students, kindergartners must get:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Fpur doses of the polio vaccine<\/li>\n<li>Five doses of the diphtheria, tetanus &amp; pertussis vaccine\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Three doses of the Hepatitis B vaccine<\/li>\n<li>Two doses of the measles, mumps &amp; rubella (MMR) vaccine\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Two doses of the varicella vaccine<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The requirements impact kids at public schools, charter schools, private schools and even hybrid schools that combine virtual learning with just a couple of days inside a classroom.<\/p>\n<p>California law mandates that students can\u2019t attend school until they are fully vaccinated, unless they can provide an approved medical exemption or have a special circumstance in which they\u2019re given a grace period to get shots.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Protecting the community from a measles outbreak<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Health experts use the term &#8220;herd immunity,&#8221; meaning that enough people are vaccinated against a disease that infection can\u2019t spread. For measles, that target number is 95%.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>NBC News found that 68% of counties that collect data on MMR rates now have rates below 95%. There is a better picture in San Diego County, where schools reported 94.8% of kindergartners had their measles vaccines during the 2023-24 school year, the most recent data available to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s one of the most important ways to keep them safe,\u201d parent Cameron Barton told NBC 7. \u201cTo think about us doing the right thing, and then another parent not doing the right thing and not getting them vaccinated, and our kid getting sick because of that, it\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, dozens of schools in the San Diego area had kindergarten vaccination rates that fell below herd immunity. In 2023, 46 schools fell below 95%.<\/p>\n<p>Erik Berg, San Diego County\u2019s Assistant Medical Director of Epidemiology and Immunization Services, has been watching those declines nervously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are seeing that trend in San Diego County, and, really, this is a trend across the United States, of decreasing vaccination rates coming after the pandemic,\u201d Berg said. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking to see a child who is admitted to a hospital or that dies from a vaccine-preventable illness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As of Sept. 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 1,431 measles cases, 35 outbreaks, and 3 deaths in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Last month, San Diego County announced its first confirmed measles case of the year: an unvaccinated teenager who traveled overseas. Last year, the county reported four cases.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear that as vaccinations decline, we\u2019ll see more cases,\u201d Berg said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How California tracks student vaccinations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A school\u2019s vaccination rate doesn\u2019t mean students don\u2019t have their shots for the entire school year. California requires schools to report student vaccination rates for kindergartners annually, by mid-December.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Schools don\u2019t submit updated numbers to the state after non-compliant students get their required vaccinations. They just need to confirm vaccinations for those kids before they allow them to attend.<\/p>\n<p>The percentage of unvaccinated students also doesn\u2019t mean a school is operating below herd immunity.<\/p>\n<p>A hypothetical school with an 8% unvaccinated rate includes students with permanent medical exemptions, students who are enrolled at the school but don\u2019t attend in-person classes and other special circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>The latest data available from the state is from the 2023-24 school year. You can see what a local school\u2019s vaccination rate is below:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><strong>Avoiding vaccinations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As vaccination rates decline nationwide, vaccine exemptions are rising. NBC News found that 53% of American counties saw rates double from their first year of data to their most recent.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not a problem here in California, which banned personal-belief exemptions in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The previous year, 3.6% of San Diego County kindergartners used that type of exemption to avoid shots, and another 0.2% used a medical exemption. In 2023, medical exemptions accounted for just 0.1%.<\/p>\n<p>Medical exemptions spiked locally and statewide after the personal-belief exemption went away but have since bottomed out after the state instituted an online verification system that physicians must use.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The only schools that don\u2019t require vaccinations are home schools and private schools with five or fewer students. The number of students attending these types of schools has been trending upward since personal belief exemptions were outlawed. There was also a spike during the pandemic.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than two-thirds of American counties that collect data on kindergarten measles vaccinations no longer have herd immunity&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":216358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,3550,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-216357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-county","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115181821906247920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}