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Before the pandemic, vaccination rates were at a state-wide average of 75% for kids up to three years old. Then, that number took a major dip down to 66% throughout the pandemic.
Even though the current rate increased, experts say there’s still work to be done.
“Now they’re up to around 70%,” said State Chief Medical Executive Natasha Bagdasarian. “We’ve made a little bit of progress, but we are not close to where we were before the pandemic.”
Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian says that, overall, there are counties at risk due to low immunization rates. The lowest is at nearly 37% in Keweenaw County. Which she says can be attributed to a number of factors.
“There was a lot of really misinformation and disinformation about things like vaccines and some of that misinformation about the COVID vaccine,” said Bagdasarian. “It trickled over onto other vaccines and made people have less trust in these vaccines.”
“For me, it’s about trusting the science, trusting the center for disease control, trusting the medical community trusting my pediatrician,” said Rebecca Mercado Jones, an Okemos parent. “My pediatrician makes very specific recommendations based on the conditions that my kids are in.”
Parents say in order for public health to work, the public has to participate.
“If there are 100 kids in a class who we never get to the point where we have 100 kids in the class, but if at least 90 of them, have the vaccination, that means that those 100 kids have a much better shot and avoiding those big yucky germs,” said Darla Bishop, a Lansing parent.
Dr. Bagdasarian added that once kids enter kindergarten, rates go up to 90%. In Ingham County, about 72% of kids up to the age of 3 are getting vaccinated. In Jackson County, that number is slightly higher at 75%.