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This story was produced by My UP News correspondent Jessica Goska. Find the original story here.
Michigan healthcare officials held a virtual press conference on Tuesday to advise parents across the state to vaccinate their children ahead of the new school year. Every year, outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases like mumps and measles occur in schools. In addition to COVID and flu, Michigan schools have seen outbreaks of some diseases, like pertussis and measles, on the rise in recent years. Measles is an especially transmissible disease. It can live on surfaces for up to two hours. The measles vaccination, though, which comes in two doses, is highly effective.
Just one dose of the measles vaccine is 93 percent effective. With both doses, the vaccine is 97 percent effective, and there are therefore very few measles cases in the United States of people vaccinated against the disease.
This school year, the spread of communicable diseases like COVID-19 and measles is of particular concern. In more than half the state (47 of 83 counties), immunization rates in children 19- to 36 months of age have fallen below 70%, according to June 2024 data from the Michigan Care Improvement Registry.
The rate has fallen below 60% in 11 Michigan counties and the City of Detroit.
Vaccination rates began to decline around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when routine doctor’s visits were put on hold due to stay-at-home orders. Now that children are returning to the classroom and people have returned to their regular routines post-pandemic, healthcare leaders like Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Chief Medical Executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), are urging parents to ensure their children’s vaccinations are up to date.
Dr. Bagdasarian was among the speakers at the I Vaccinate virtual press conference on August 27. She said at the conference that the numbers are not where they should be to achieve herd immunity for serious communicable diseases like measles. To help protect against outbreaks of these diseases, she and Veronica McNally, founder of the I Vaccinate campaign, are urging parents to vaccinate their kids.
“I just want to remind everyone that the vaccines I’m talking about, with measles being one example, are incredibly safe and effective. In many cases, these are the same vaccines that we got as children,” said Dr. Bagdasarian.
McNally started I Vaccinate after losing her infant daughter to a whopping cough in 2012.
“We know these diseases can spread quickly and sometimes, they can have devastating consequences,” McNally explained at the conference. “Vaccine-preventable diseases are still a threat, and vaccinations are our best protection against them.”
For school-aged children, vaccination rates are closer to 90% across the state—but there is much variation in those numbers at the county level.
“There are still communities out there that are extremely vulnerable,” explained Dr. Bagdasarian.
Though they are small schools, some Michigan elementary and middle schools report none of their students are up to date on their vaccinations. Michigan school immunization data can be found here
