Wisconsin DHS Logo
(WTAQ-WLUK) — A new report from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services shows school year vaccination rates remained steady for the 2024-25 school year.
According to the report, 86.4% of students met the minimum immunization requirements, a slight decrease from the school year prior.
The DHS says the unfamiliarity with a new meningitis vaccination requirement for students in grades 7 to 12 is behind the decline.
Without the meningitis vaccine, 89.3% of students met the minimum requirement, a 0.1% increase from last year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a national report which reported Wisconsin kindergartners lagged behind other states for protection against vaccine-preventable illnesses.
“Our school vaccination data tells us there are children in our schools who are not protected from an outbreak of preventable diseases like measles,” State Health Officer Paula Tran said in a statement.
“In public health, we know that 95% of people in a community need to be vaccinated against measles in order to prevent an outbreak, which is why it’s so important to get children the vaccines they need on time.”
This comes after the Wisconsin DNR recently announced its first confirmed cases of measles in Wisconsin this year, all in Oconto County.
The full report of school vaccination data for last school year, plus the Wisconsin Immunization Registry, can be found here.
Comments