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NEW YORK, N.Y. – (AP) – A small but growing proportion of the children in the United States have been vaccinated against any disease, worrying health officials.
An estimated 100,000 young children have had a vaccination against any of the 14 diseases for which shots are recommended, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday.
"This is pretty much about it," said the CDC's Dr. Amanda Cohn.
Most young children – 70 percent – have had all their shots. The new estimate is based on finding, in 2017, 1.3 percent of the children born in 2015 were completely unvaccinated. That's up from the previous year. A 2001 survey with a different methodology suggested the proportion of 0.3 percent.
Young children are particularly vulnerable to complications from vaccine-preventable diseases, some of which can be fatal.
The latest numbers from a telephone survey last year of the parents of about 15,000 toddlers. The 100th update refers to the 2017 vaccination status of children born in 2015 and 2016.
A separate CDC study found that overall vaccination rates for older, age-matched children continued to hold steady, with close to 95 percent fully vaccinated.
The researchers did not ask why parents did not get their kids vaccinated.
A significant minority of them did not have health insurance coverage. Health officials said that this was a surprise because of a country program for vaccines for uninsured children.
But the majority have been insured. What's going on is not clear, but one factor may be some parents' misperceptions about the safety and importance of vaccines, some experts said.
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