Despite a federal effort to decrease the number of vaccines required for children, new data shows vaccination rates remain high among school-aged children in Illinois.
The measles vaccination rate is 96.8% across the state, according to the newly released data from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The dashboard uses data from the Illinois State Board of Education that is collected from school districts across the state.
Other parts of the country have experienced measles outbreaks recently, including in South Carolina where nearly 1,000 people contracted the highly contagious disease since October. For months, Illinois officials have pushed back on efforts led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, to limit childhood vaccinations.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced the number of recommended vaccines, but Illinois health officials were determined not to change local guidance.
“Our latest school immunization numbers validate our efforts to make vaccines more accessible,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in a prepared statement. A court order blocked federal efforts to limit the vaccines in March as a result of a federal lawsuit. Last week, the Trump administration filed an appeal last, according to the AP.
Dr. Sameer Vohra, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said nearly all of the vaccines met the state’s goal of having at least 95% coverage rate. In April, Vohra told the Sun-Times that Pritzker, along with the state’s advisory immunization committee, was working to ensure residents had transparent and science-based information about vaccines as changes started to unfold on the federal level.
“I think one of the core tenants of the work in the department of public health and under Gov. Pritzker’s leadership has been to ensure that for health-related information, that it’s being credible, transparent and following gold-standard scientific processes,” Vohra said in an interview with the Sun-Times in April. “What we’ve seen from the federal government has been a push against some of those processes that many residents, healthcare providers, like myself, a general pediatrician, really counted on.”
Across the state, the vaccination rate for measles is slightly higher than in the past two school years but lower than it was during the 2020-2021 school year, according to the data.
In Chicago, the vaccination rate is 95.8%, lower than the state’s rate, according to the data. In suburban Cook County, the vaccination rate is 97% and officials there had rolled out a measles inoculation program at the start of the school year.
Pulaski County, located in the southern part of the state, was the only county that had a measles rate under 90%.
The state did see a slight decrease in the number of school children who were vaccinated against hepatitis B, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The rate decreased slightly from 97.2% this year from 97.3% last school year.
Last year, federal health officials stopped recommending the vaccine for newborns, but Illinois officials soon reaffirmed their recommendation to continue the practice of administering the vaccine to healthy and stable infants.
The hepatitis B vaccine is typically given to infants within 24 hours of birth to prevent liver infection and chronic disease.
The state’s data also shows that there has been an increase in the number of vaccine exemptions due to religious reasons. There were 17,460 for this school year compared to 2,425 a decade ago, according to the state’s data.