CT Bill Would Eliminate Religious Exemption For Vaccines

HARTFORD, CT — Some legislators are pushing for legislation that would eliminate the religious exemption for children who want to attend schools in Connecticut amid a growing number of unvaccinated kindergarteners.

The draft of the bill calls for children who have a religious exemption for vaccinations to be barred from attending school in the 2020-2021 school year. Medically-necessary exemptions would still be allowed. The bill would also mandate that DPH release school-by-school immunization data annually.

House Majority Leader Matt Ridder (D-Hartford) said the push to get the bill done for the 2020-2021 school year could stem more unvaccinated children in school, according to the CT Mirror.

The CT Freedom Alliance said in a statement that it strongly opposes the bill.

“In one fell swoop, this legislation would obliterate the religious liberties of hundreds of thousands of CT schoolchildren, while simultaneously mandating the Department of Public Health to release confidential immunization information for every public and private school student in the state,” the group said in a statement.

The group also said in its statement that an advisory committee for medical exemptions would inject too much medical decision-making powers into the hands of politicians.

A public hearing is scheduled for Feb. 19, according to the Hartford Courant.

See Related: School-By-School Vaccination Rates In CT Released For 2018-19

There are 134 schools throughout the state where the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine rate for kindergarteners falls below the federal recommendation of 95 percent, according to data released by the state Department of Public Health for the 2018-2019 school year.

The overall statewide religious exemption rate increased 25 percent between two school years from two percent to 2.5 percent; it is the largest single year increase since the state started tracking data a decade ago. Overall 96.4 percent of public school kindergarteners and 92.4 percent of private school kindergarteners have an MMR vaccine.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that most children get their first MMR vaccine between 12 and 15-months-old with certain high risk groups getting it sooner.

High vaccination rates not only protect vaccinated children, but also protect those who can't receive vaccinations for other reasons thanks to herd immunity, according to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

There were 1,282 individual cases of measles in 31 states during 2019, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention preliminary data. Of those there were 128 hospitalizations and 61 cases that had complications including pneumonia and encephalitis.

The surge in cases was the most since 1992 and 73 percent of cases were linked to outbreaks in New York. The majority of cases were among people who weren’t vaccinated.

As of Jan. 31 there were five confirmed cases in five states during 2020.