Survey: Number of Children Not Vaccinated Has Quadrupled Since 2001
WORRYING
Estimated 100,000 young children in the U.S. were found to have received no vaccines in 2017.
Mike Blake/Reuters
Tens of thousands of young children in the U.S. have purposely not been vaccinated against potentially life-threatening diseases, a trend that health officials say has grown in recent years. A survey cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday found that an estimated 100,000 children born in 2015 and 2016 had received no vaccinations as of 2017. That figure made up 1.3 percent of children born in those years and is a fourfold increase from the 0.3 percent of children without vaccinations found in a 2001 survey. Health experts have said growing misconceptions about the safety of vaccines may be behind the increase in children not receiving vaccines. Amanda Cohn, a senior adviser for vaccines at the CDC, told the Associated Press: “This is pretty concerning. It’s something we need to understand better—and reduce.”
