![]() ![]() The information is recorded at the start of the school year, before some students are vaccinated. School staff may err when entering numbers. “Geographic pockets of vaccine exemptors pose a risk to the whole community,” he wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.Įxperts caution that the state’s vaccination records have limits. In a 2008 paper, Omer found clusters of whooping cough cases associated with areas where rates of nonmedical vaccination exemptions were high. That is why parents should be concerned, even if they do the right thing and get their kid vaccinated.” ![]() “But the community risk of outbreak goes up, depending on what is happening in your community and in your school. It is not that we are going to have the same rates of measles that we had in the pre-vaccination era any time soon,” Omer said. Most of the cases were linked to people who got measles overseas, and most, but not all, were unvaccinated. has recorded the highest number of measles cases - 118 through May - since 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The match could be a student who returns from a trip abroad with measles or a train commuter with whooping cough. “Even the best vaccines are not perfect.”Ĭlusters of unvaccinated people are, Omer said, like patches of dry grass that, with a single match, can start a wildfire that will burn not only dry material, but sometimes wet as well. “Whenever the community risk goes up, everyone tends to get affected, including people who are vaccinated,” said Saad Omer, an Emory University scientist who researches unvaccinated clusters. Baltimore Sun eNewspaper Home Page Close Menuīut scientists and public health officials say clusters of unvaccinated people across the country are weakening the herd immunity made possible through vaccines and resurrecting preventable childhood diseases that can be deadly.
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