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HARTFORD, CT (UPDATE 4:16 PM) – Connecticut schools have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, but according to the state's Department of Public Health, 116 public schools have reported immunization rates below measles, mumps and rubella 95% last year.
This included six schools in which less than 80% of kindergarten children were vaccinated.
The immunization data, which pertained to the 2017-2018 school year, was published as a result of a series of requests from CTNewsJunkie and members of the General Assembly. The DPH State updated its data in the afternoon on Friday, including removing lists that initially transferred all schools with enrollments under 30 students. The original DPH data also indicated immunization rates for kindergarten and grade 7 children separately for the same schools in some cases, so the current map with this story also corrects this change.
Measles outbreaks, like the nine in New York, California, Michigan, Maryland, Georgia and New Jersey, are less likely to occur in schools where large numbers of students are immunized to obtain collective immunity.
Herd immunity is described as a vaccination rate high enough to protect unvaccinated children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predict that this number is 95%.
Jody L. Terranova, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut and advocate for vaccines for the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (CT-AAP), said that these data would help the country's health care. academy to visit schools at low numbers to see what education they can provide to improve immunization rates to protect students who can not be vaccinated due to medical conditions. Terranova added that the data could open the eyes to parents whose children have a compromised immune system, because if their school falls below 95%, there is no collective immunity and they face at an increased risk of epidemic.
"We clearly have a false sense of security when we use the state's overall vaccination rate and we can now see areas in any state where our residents are vulnerable to preventable diseases," Terranova said. .
The CT-AAP and the Connecticut State Medical Society have both "alarmed by the surprising report on vaccination in the schools of the Department of Public Health" released today.
"The facts do not lie," said CSMS Chair Claudia Gruss, MD. "We know that vaccinations have proven safe and effective and are one of our best lines of defense to protect the health of the population."
Last year, the lowest percentages of children in the Connecticut Children's Garden immunized with the MMR vaccine were in schools in Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford and East Hartford. In at least six schools in these cities, maternal immunization rates were below 80%.
In at least 36 schools, the MMR vaccine rate for kindergarten children was less than 90%. These schools were located at Groton, Norwich, New Haven, Bloomfield, Hartford, Bridgeport, South Windsor, New Canaan, Waterbury, Redding, Mansfield, Milford, Westport, Canterbury, Stafford and Stamford.
In the DPH also provided vaccination data for grade 7 students throughout the state. MMR vaccination rates were less than 90% in five schools, including Norwich, Newtown, New Haven, Hartford and Killingly.
Seventh year vaccination rates ranged from 90% to 92% in Greenwich, Guilford, Stamford and Bridgeport schools.
The total number of schools with RRO vaccine rates below 95% was 116, when kindergarten and grade 7 students were included, but many questions remain unanswered on data released on Friday morning.
Why do some schools with low vaccination rates provide no exemption?
Kathy Kudish, head of the Connecticut Ministry of Health's immunization program, said children who do not have the required number of vaccine doses may not have an exemption on the record.
She added that all the data had been self-reported by the schools and that only a handful of schools were interested on Friday after the publication of the data to inform the DPH of the eventual existence d & # 39; error.
Kudish said the DPH is addressing these issues and will fix the database as updates arrive, and plans to release updated information within a week or so.
She admitted that updated information could change vaccination rates in some schools.
The information published included the percentages of kindergarten and grade 7 children who are vaccinated against measles and other diseases, as recommended. The DPH also includes the percentage of children of all classes who benefit from a vaccination exemption, based on what schools report to the state.
Democratic legislative leaders in the House and Senate said the data proved what they feared.
"The level of vaccination is dangerously low in many schools and communities, putting the health of the population at risk. This is a serious public health problem, "said Senate Speaker Martin Looney, D-New Haven.
House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, who has not hesitated to end the religious exemption for vaccines, said the numbers were "shocking".
The release of the data has provided ammunition to lawmakers who advocate for the lifting of the religious immunization waiver for students wishing to attend public schools facing a vocal group of parents who have lobbied hard to keep it .
"Public health is always a top priority, and when there are signs that compromise it, you can not ignore it," said House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz of D-Berlin.
LeeAnn Ducat, founder of Informed Choice USA, said some of the information published by DPH was "inaccurate".
"Recently, Matt Ritter made it clear that publishing this data would identify hot spots that could be infected and that" hoping, publishing this data would increase vaccination rates. "The only way for me to achieve this result is harassment, peer pressure and the pressure exerted on these cities / districts to create an unfavorable environment for exempt users, "said Ducat.
She also claimed that the state had violated its own law by publishing the data.
Paragraph 10-204a-4 (c) states that "all immunization information collected by the Ministry shall be confidential." We therefore believe that DPH is in violation of the law and we are considering the possibility of taking action in this area. justice, "said Ducat.
This is the first time that the department publishes information on vaccination rates of various vaccines, school by school. Schools with low vaccination rates also have higher rates of religious and medical exemptions. The corrected data provided by the DPH does not include schools with fewer than 30 students and does not include early childhood centers or pre-school centers.
DPH Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell, who recently returned from the state of Washington in Connecticut, who recently faced a measles outbreak, wrote to school principals earlier this week for their let them know that she was disclosing the information.
"While the vaccination rate of kindergarten children against measles, mumps and rubella in Connecticut remained high last year at 96.5%, the number of fully immunized students entering kindergarten and grade seven, tends to go down, "wrote Coleman-Mitchell. "An epidemic of disease is less likely to occur in schools where many students are vaccinated."
Coleman-Mitchell said Friday that "the goal of publishing each school's immunization data is to increase public awareness of vaccination rates in local communities." Hopefully this will lead to greater involvement and concentration on increasing vaccination rates to reduce the risk of vaccination.
preventable diseases. "
At a press conference held Friday in the capital, Ritter said they expected a handful of schools to be at risk of an epidemic, but they did not expect that as many schools report vaccination rates of less than 95%.
"The magnitude of this problem is why you saw the comments you saw," Ritter said. "Nobody saw him coming."
Ritter said that he expects the public to begin asking lawmakers what they plan to do about it.
But Ritter said they wanted to wait until the Attorney General, William Tong, published his opinion on the constitutionality of the religious exemption, and then decided where to go from there.
"We literally have dozens of schools that are not one point below, but two digits below the level recommended by the CDC," said Ritter.
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