More than 100 CT schools have lower than standard vaccination rates

HARTFORD – Connecticut schools have one of the highest immunization rates in the country, but according to the state's Department of Public Health, 116 public schools have reported vaccination rates below 95% against measles, mumps and rubella last year.

This included six schools in which less than 80% of kindergarten children had been 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 seventh grade students separately for the same schools in some cases.

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 a collective immunity.

Herd immunity is described as a vaccination rate high enough to protect unvaccinated children. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that this number was 95%.

Dr. 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, said that these data would help the academy to contact sparsely populated schools to determine the type of education. they can help improve vaccination rates to protect students who can not be vaccinated because of medical problems. Terranova said the data could be a revelation to parents whose children have a compromised immune system because if their school falls below 95%, there is no collective immunity and they do faced with 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 American Academy of Pediatrics and the Connecticut State Medical Society have declared themselves "alarmed by the alarming vaccination report of the Department of Public Health," released Friday.

"The facts do not lie," said Claudia Gruss, president of the Connecticut State Medical Society. "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."

The lowest percentages of Connecticut mothers immunized with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine were in schools in Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford and East Hartford last year. 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 children 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 reported by the schools and that only a handful of schools were set in motion 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 said 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 returned from Washington State to Connecticut – following a measles outbreak – wrote to school superintendents earlier this week to make them know that she was disclosing the information.

"While the maternal immunization rate for measles, mumps, and rubella in Connecticut remained high last year at 96.5 percent, the number of students fully immunized in kindergarten and the seventh year is 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 increased engagement and concentration on Increasing vaccination rates to reduce the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases. "

At a press conference held in the Capitol Friday, Ritter said that they were expecting that a handful of schools are at risk of an epidemic, but they did not expect such a large number of schools to report vaccination rates below 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.

Tom McMorran, Director of Easton, Redding and Region 9, said the state exemption rate data were inaccurate for Redding Elementary School. State data showed that the school exemption rate was above 41%.

However, McMorran said the school had a 4.7% exemption rate, with 22 of the 469 students applying for an exemption.