Measles vaccination rates for young children may be far lower than publicly reported, a troubling development that could mean the United States is closer than expected to losing its “elimination status” for the extremely contagious disease.
“We are experiencing an extremely concerning decline in measles vaccination in the very group most vulnerable to the disease,” said Benjamin Rader, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of a recent study that looked at children’s vaccination rates.
The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues.
COVID-19 vaccination slashed the risk of experiencing prolonged symptoms by about 27% in fully vaccinated adults who were later infected, estimates a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) systematic review of 12 studies.
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