Vaccine coverage for children declined by the age of 2 for eight vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new study.
CDC researchers compared the percentage of children vaccinated with recommended shots across two time periods. The first set of children was born in 2019 and 2020. The second set was born in 2021 and 2022.
Vaccine coverage for children declined by the time the children turned 2, researchers reported in the paper, published on March 26 by the CDC’s quasi-journal.
The sharpest declines were for vaccines against influenza, with a decrease of 7.4 percent, to 53.5 percent; rotavirus, with a decrease of 1.7 percent, to 74.2 percent; and pneumococcal disease, with a decrease of 1.5 percent, to 80.5 percent. Influenza vaccine coverage has plummeted in recent years and has been down 12 percent since 2019….