Vaccinations rise when states button up religious loopholes
Read the full story on NBC News
According to state immunization data, vaccination rates among kindergartners in Massachusetts have been falling — from 95.9% in 2020 to 94.3% this past school year — as the proportion of students with religious exemptions has risen: 0.93% in 2020 to 1.33% currently.
Schools in Massachusetts loosened vaccination requirement rules during the pandemic, allowing unvaccinated students to attend class without exemptions. In some areas of the state, the proportion of students who are allowed to skip shots because of exemptions is as high as 12.8%, according to the state’s data.
There’s “a lot of concern about what’s happening with kids and keeping them safe from vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the SAFE Communities Coalition, an organization that supports pro-vaccination policies. “People are fed up.”
A bill working its way through the Massachusetts statehouse proposes removing nonmedical exemptions — including religious and philosophical beliefs — for vaccination requirements to attend public schools.
“Misuse of the current religious exemption loophole in Massachusetts policy has led to kindergarten classes across our state with terrifyingly low rates of vaccination,” Logan Beyer, a Harvard Medical School student, said at a hearing about the legislation last month.
Beyer, who studies child health and child health equity, testified that she had a conversation with a woman who confided that she would use the religious exemption loophole to delay vaccinating her child. “‘We don’t really go to church, but you don’t have to prove anything,’” the woman said, according to Beyer.
Massachusetts isn’t alone. Vaccination rates have been falling across the United States for years.