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SALT LAKE CITY — A new report from the Utah Department of Health found that vaccination rates for students attending Utah charter schools are lower than those attending Utah public schools. Namely, there are more students in Utah charter schools with non-medical vaccine exemptions than in public schools.
The report stated that as a result, charter school students were 5.2 times more likely to contract varicella, or chickenpox, through an outbreak than those attending Utah public schools.
The report examined the exemption rates between 2011-2016 and found non-medical exemptions increased for both public and charter schools, with the rate increasing from 3.4% to 4.7% in Utah public schools and from 8.4% to 9.4% for Utah charter schools. Utah is one of 18 states that allows non-medical vaccine exemptions for K-12 school children, the report notes.
Even though Utah public schools experienced 10 outbreaks of chickenpox in those years and charter schools only had four, the average number of cases in an outbreak was 10.4 for public schools and 13.3 for charter schools, according to the report.
Carson Telford, an analytic epidemiologist with the state health department and author of the report, pointed out the number of students enrolled at public schools is far higher than those in Utah charter schools, but charter school's rate of chickenpox outbreaks per student was higher.
“I look at it as our responsibility to protect those around us by vaccinating ourselves,” Telford told KSL.com on Tuesday.
Of all reported chickenpox cases, the rate of infection per 10,000 students was 2.8 for public schools and 4.9 for charter schools, according to the report.
So, why are parents who choose to send their children to charter schools more likely to not vaccinate those children? Telford said the department is interested in answering that question with future research and studies. However, he noted the potential project is still in the discussion stages.
Telford also noted that this report only focuses on chickenpox but could serve as an indicator of what could happen with other vaccine-preventable diseases in Utah schools. The UDOH does plan to issue future reports to examine those diseases.
“We do see a significantly reduced number of infections among people who are vaccinated and then among people who still are infected, who have been vaccinated, the severity of infection is much less,” Telford said.
Parents choosing not to vaccinate their children isn’t a new thing for the Beehive State. A 2018 study ranked Morgan County with the 10th highest exemption rate among all U.S. counties in states that allow non-medical exemptions.
Earlier this year, a Utah chapter of a national anti-vaccination group marched at the capitol building to voice their dissatisfaction with the national Senate hearings on mandatory vaccinations taking place in Washington D.C.
Outbreaks of measles sparked a discussion on mandating vaccines and pushed the anti-vaccine movement into the spotlight in early 2019. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there had been 971 individual cases of measles confirmed across the nation this year as of May 30, the highest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1994.
While Telford said there haven’t been any measles cases in Utah, there have been reported cases of mumps this year.
Herd immunity is necessary to keep communities healthy, Telford said.
“There are a lot of people who are immunocompromised, or are unable to be vaccinated because their immune system is not strong enough or whatever reason it may be,” he said. “I look at it as our responsibility to protect those around us by vaccinating ourselves.”
Telford noted that some people aren’t given the choice to get vaccinated or not — they want to, but are unable to for medical reasons.
“There are a lot of people that wish they could get vaccinated, they just can’t,” he said. “The more people we can vaccinate, the more we can protect those people who don’t have the luxury of getting vaccinated.”
