While the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee sits poised to vote on a bill to eliminate non-medical exemptions, the reason for the bill becomes even more apparent: the rate of nonmedical exemptions in schoolchildren rose last year from 5.0% to 5.6%, and the rate of kindergarten children immunized against measles, mumps, and rubella fell from 94.3% to 93.8%.

The national rate of nonmedical exemptions was 2%.

Immunization of kindergartners in five counties were below the 95% level generally considered to be necessary to confer “herd”, or community, immunity.

You can read more in the Bangor Daily News article, here.

Meanwhile, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 136 cases of pertussis in Maine through March 2019, more than double the 59 cases reported in the same period in 2018. Maine’s total of 446 cases in 2018 was the highest per capita rate in the nation, at 33.16 per 100,000, compared to the national average of 4.13 cases per 100,000.

For more information on the pertussis rates in Maine, see the Central Maine newspapers article, here.