Kindergarten vaccine exemptions hit all time high
The Hill · C · trust 66/100
The percentage of American kindergartners exempted from MMR vaccines rose sharply in the 2025-26 school year, as overall vaccination rates continued to fall.
New federal data released Monday showed exemptions from one or more vaccines among kindergartners in the United States increased to 4.2 percent , up from 3.6 percent the previous year.
At the same time, vaccination coverage for all reported vaccines— MMR (measles, mumps and rubella); DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis); poliovirus vaccine (polio); and varicella (chicken pox) fell slightly from the year before.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, 92.4 percent of students had received the MMR vaccine, below the 95 percent rate that’s considered necessary to prevent widespread outbreaks. This comes as the U.S. continues to suffer through the worst measles epidemic in 35 years.
The U.S. has been steadily falling away from this coverage rate since the pre-pandemic 2019-20 school year, when the coverage rate was 95.2 percent. Since then, the rate has remained below 94 percent.
All states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated against certain diseases, including measles and rubella, in order to attend public schools, though exemptions are allowed in certain circumstances , including for religious or philosophical purposes.
The data show a significant increase in the percentage of families with non-medical exemptions and across more states.
Pockets of undervaccinated children within larger areas of high vaccination coverage can lead to outbreaks, CDC has said.
The decline in childhood vaccine coverage comes as the Trump administration and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are trying to make sweeping changes to federal vaccination policy amid heated partisan fights over COVID-19 vaccine mandates and a lingering distrust of public health authorities.
CDC reported more than 2,500 measles cases last week , exceeding the 2289 cases from all of 2025. According to the agency, 93 percent were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.
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