Spanish
Miami, March 30 (EFE).- Vaccination rates in children aged 2 years or younger against five diseases have fallen in the United States, particularly influenza, revealed a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) amid the fight to change the immunization schedule.
The research found that the two-dose influenza vaccination rate fell by 7.4 percentage points, to 53.5%, in children born between 2021 and 2022 compared to those born between 2019 and 2020.
It also reported decreases of 1.8 percentage points in hepatitis B vaccination coverage, 1.7 points against rotavirus, 1.5 against pneumococcus, and 1 point against Haemophilus influenzae type b, known as the Hib vaccine.
The study compared inoculation data of children up to 2 years old born between 2021 and 2022 versus those from 2019 and 2020 in the 2024 National Immunization Survey-Child (NIS-Child) of the Government, which considered recommended vaccines against 16 diseases.
"Although national vaccination coverage remained stable for most vaccines, lower coverage among certain population subgroups and in the same jurisdictions is creating a greater risk of vaccine-preventable outbreaks," concluded the authors of the report.
In this regard, they cited the 2,144 confirmed cases of measles in the United States in 2025, the largest outbreak since this disease was declared eradicated in the year 2000 and with 93% of the infections occurring in unvaccinated people.
The CDC warned that coverage is lower among African American children, Latinos, those living in poverty, and residents of rural areas, while those of Asian origin had the greatest protection.
The diseases with the lowest inoculation coverage were hepatitis A, with only 46.8% of children receiving two doses of the vaccine, and influenza (53.5%).
Furthermore, 1.2% of children did not receive any vaccine at all, which is just below the 1.3% target.
These findings precede the current Secretary of Health under President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who questions vaccines.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced in January that it stopped mandating four vaccines, those for rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease, and hepatitis A, within the childhood immunization schedule in the United States. But a federal judge in Massachusetts suspended the aforementioned changes on March 16 in response to a lawsuit from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical organizations.
