![]() ![]() “That’s ideal, fertile soil for starting an outbreak, which will then spread like wildfire.” “It’s the groups of unvaccinated people that will start and propagate outbreaks,” Shaw said. The New York State Department of Health would not explain why some private schools saw such drastic leaps in exemptions, noting instead that the overall rate across the state remained low.īoth school years were also disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, potentially creating additional hurdles in vaccination enforcement as students shifted out of the classroom and health officials addressed widespread outbreaks of the virus.īut experts warn small pockets of vulnerable students can still drive local spread - especially when unvaccinated people tend to be “geographically clustered.” Of those, more than 1,000 were revoked, though 31 were later restored after appeals. Since the start of 2021, health officials in California said they’ve reviewed more than half of the nearly 10,000 medical exemptions issued in the state. She reportedly filed around 1,000 exemptions in the years after non-medical exemptions were removed in what the state called “gross negligence.” Take action against some physicians - in one case suspending a San Diego doctor’s The Medical Board of California would later More than five medical exemptions in a year. By 2019, the rate of medical exemptions had risenįrom 0.2 to 0.9 percent for all students, prompting lawmakers to pass additional legislation requiring the state to audit schools with an immunization rate below 95 percent and doctors who signed off on In California, where nonmedical exemptions were eliminated in 2015, a similar trend arose statewide. While prior school years had seen schools rise above 0.2 percent, no school had hit 1 percent medical exemptions since the 2015-16 school year, when a single institution did, according to state data. “It’s really, really unlikely that those are true medical exemptions,” said Jana Shaw, a professor of pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University, after reviewing a portion of the state survey data provided by POLITICO. One school reported a medical exemption rate of more than 36 percent. Twenty-one schools reported exemption rates above 5 percent in 2020-21 - five of them exceeded 10 percent, and five more were above 20 percent. That year, more than 1,000 schools reported medical exemptions exceeding the previous 0.2 percent high, and over 200 schools rose to 1 percent or more. The rate statewide remained at 0.1 percent, but the number of schools reporting higher-than-average exemption rates rose sharply. The survey records rates of immunization for polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox and other diseases, while also tracking the percent of students fully immunized at each school.ĭuring the 2019-20 school year, campuses statewide reported 2,097 students with medical exemptions, accounting for 0.13 percent of students, though even schools with the highest medical exemption rates reached only 0.2 percent.īut in the 2020-21 school year - one year after religious carve-outs were eliminated and the latest year for which data is available - the number of medical exemptions ticked up to 2,650. While the state requires a battery of inoculations, its survey does not track reasons for exemptions or whether the exemptions apply to one, some or all required vaccinations. ![]() “And unless some of these schools have a super high concentration of children who are cancer patients, for example, there is no plausible explanation as to why the rates are so high unless somebody is lying.” A dubious riseĮach year, schools are required to report immunization data through a state survey - including the number of medical exemptions issued and how many students have received their required vaccines. “Clearly, things didn’t change for large numbers of children medically in that short period of time,” he said in an interview. “It’s pretty obvious that there is a fraud taking place - one that endangers the lives of people,” said Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, a sponsor of the 2019 bill that removed nonmedical exemptions in response to a measles outbreak among a religious community. Leading the way in exemptions are religious and private schools, which have come under fresh scrutiny afterĪ sweeping New York Times investigation into the quality of education provided at some Jewish religious schools. ![]() The revelation also comes as New York - the frequent epicenter of contagious outbreaks, from measles to West Nile - deals with a resurgence of polio, the continued spread of Covid-19 and at least one childhood case of monkeypox this year. The shift, uncovered by a POLITICO analysis of state data, mirrors a similar outcome in California and highlights potential gaps in oversight and enforcement that medical experts warn could allow dangerous diseases to flourish. ![]()
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