MMR Vaccination Rates Dropped During COVID-19 Pandemic: Study
The rates of measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccination declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported in a new paper.
In a research letter dated June 2, researchers
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Warning over measles risk during school holidays
Parents are being urged to make sure their children are vaccinated against measles ahead of the summer holidays as an outbreak continues to spread across the UK. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world, but two doses of the MMR vaccine during childhood can offer lifelong protection. However, uptake of the vaccine in Britain is below recommended levels, and cases have been rising. Young children have the first dose of the vaccine when they are one year old and the second at between three years and four months and five years of age. There have been 420 measles cases in England so far this year, with 86 last month alone, figures from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reveal. Two thirds of the cases were in children under 10, and almost 40 per cent were in London. The capital has the lowest vaccination percentage in the country, with more than a quarter of the population going without full protection. Officials are concerned that the infection, which can lead to serious complications, spreads easily through the air via sneezes, coughs and exhalations. They said it could see an uptick when schools break up for the summer and children mingle during the holidays. Measles has an estimated 'R' number of around 18, which means that, on average, a single infected person passes the infection on to 18 others. Covid has a natural 'R' number of about three. Dr Vanessa Saliba, a consultant epidemiologist at UKHSA, said: 'It's essential that everyone, particularly parents of young children, check all family members are up to date with two MMR doses, especially if you are travelling this summer for holidays or visiting family. 'Measles cases are picking up again in England, and outbreaks are happening in Europe and many countries with close links to the UK. 'Measles spreads very easily and can be a nasty disease, leading to complications like ear and chest infections and inflammation of the brain, with some children tragically ending up in hospital and suffering life-long consequences. Nobody wants this for their child, and it's not something you want to experience when away on holiday.' People who have the two doses of the MMR vaccine, which are safe and effective, are not only protecting themselves but also helping protect others who are unvaccinated, such as young babies. Health officials said parents could check their child's 'red book', a national record given to parents or carers to document a child's health and development, to see if they are fully protected. Adults can check their vaccination status by contacting their GP or checking in the NHS app, although not everyone's complete immunisation data is live on the app. UKHSA said that cases in Europe had reached their highest level in almost three decades last year. A global increase in measles has led the agency to say it is concerned that this could mean people bring back the contagious disease to England after travelling over the summer. There were more than 127,000 cases of measles in Europe last year, according to global health leaders, the highest number since 1997. So far this year, outbreaks have been documented in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Romania, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Nigeria currently have among the largest number of measles cases worldwide, according to a recent report by the World Health Organisation. Dr Amanda Doyle, the national director for primary care and community services at NHS England, said: 'The recent increase in cases seen in England and Europe should act as an important reminder to ensure your child is protected. 'Too many babies and young children are still not protected against the diseases, which are contagious infections that spread very easily and can cause serious health problems. 'MMR jabs are provided free as part of the NHS routine immunisation programme, and I would encourage all parents to act on invites or check vaccination records if they think they may have missed their child's vaccination.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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Chronic Absenteeism Hasn't Gone Away After Lockdowns. Research Shows Poor Kids Are Hurt Most.
Chronic absenteeism has long been cited as one of the most severe lasting impacts of COVID-era school shutdowns. New research indicates that the problem is sticking around for groups of students already facing significant disadvantages. "The income gap really was the main driver that showed up over and over again," said University of Southern California (USC) education professor Morgan Polikoff during a presentation of his research at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) event last week. "The fact that student-level income is the main driver here seems to be really important." Chronic absenteeism—often defined as when a student is absent for more than 10 percent of the school year—skyrocketed during the pandemic. According to AEI's absenteeism tracker, by 2022, national chronic absenteeism increased by 89 percent when compared to three years prior. While absenteeism has declined from its 2022 peak in most states that report such data, 2024 figures show it remains higher than pre-pandemic levels. Absolute rates of absenteeism varied broadly state by state. In Alabama, students had the lowest rate, peaking at 18 percent in 2022 and falling to 15 percent in 2024. By contrast, nearly half of all students in Washington, D.C., were chronically absent in 2022, dropping to a still-staggering 40 percent in 2024. According to Polikoff's research, low-income students in particular are facing persistent increases in absenteeism when compared to pre-pandemic numbers. Polikoff looked at school absenteeism data from North Carolina and Virginia. He explained that, when comparing absenteeism from before and after the pandemic, the attendance gap between low-income and non-low-income students grew dramatically. Post-pandemic, Virginia low-income students were 12.1 percentage points more likely to be chronically absent than other students, and in North Carolina, these students were 14.4 percentage points more likely to be chronically absent. Polikoff noted that the gap between different racial groups was relatively minor after controlling for income. "When looking in absolute terms, the most disadvantaged groups are typically more likely to have seen larger increases in chronic absenteeism," he said. "Racial gaps are not overly large, controlling for income and other things. How exactly to reverse these trends has long puzzled education professionals. School districts have tried everything from home visits to free ice cream and gift cards, yet the problem remains persistent. "[Absenteeism is] what the corona did," a 21-year-old told ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis in a story co-published with The New Yorker last year. "They're sending the kids back to school, and they don't want to no more. They want to stay home and play on their computers." The post Chronic Absenteeism Hasn't Gone Away After Lockdowns. Research Shows Poor Kids Are Hurt Most. appeared first on
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Florida schools face alarming rise in student absences since pandemic
ORLANDO, Fla. — Ivan Flores didn't love school before the pandemic hit, but his views soured more when he did ninth grade online and off campus. 'I was just at home doing nothing, waking up late, missing assignments,' he said. When he resumed in-person classes at Evans High School in the 2021-22 school year, that habit stuck. His attendance was spotty and his classwork often undone. In tenth grade he estimated he missed nearly 60 days of school, or a third of the academic year. He is part of an alarming trend. Absenteeism across Florida skyrocketed beginning with that COVID-19 interlude — and, confounding experts' predictions and defying educators' hopes, it hasn't come back down. Nearly one million Florida students missed more than three weeks of school last year, a staggering number of chronically absent children undermining their academic success. In the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic, about 20% of Florida's public school students missed 10% or more of the school year, meeting the state definition of chronically absent. That figure topped 32% the year after COVID shuttered schools and has barely inched down since — remaining above 31% in the 2023-34 school year, the latest year for which data is available, an analysis by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel shows. Central Florida's schools counted more than 145,000 chronically absent students who missed 18 or more days out of that 180-day school year. Orlando's three downtown sports venues combined couldn't hold them all. Though 2024-25 attendance information is not yet available statewide, early data from Osceola and Seminole county schools shows some modest improvements but rates still well above pre-pandemic levels. Educators say the pandemic, which shuttered all Florida schools and forced students to study online, fundamentally broke some parents' and students' bonds with education. COVID-19 created new hardships especially for families living in poverty, and those challenges impacted their ability to get their children to school. But something less tangible shifted, too. The pandemic disrupted attendance habits, accustomed students to looser standards and convinced them in-person classes mattered less. 'Once they got comfortable with not going into that building, they got comfortable,' said Tequila Dillon, whose daughter ran into serious attendance problems at her Orange County high school before turning things around. Chronic absenteeism is a nationwide phenomenon, one that is fueling falling test scores in this state and others. But Florida so far has failed to take a comprehensive approach to the problem. Last year, Attendance Works, an education advocacy group, urged all 50 states to recognize absenteeism as the most crucial issue facing education and tackle it with an 'all-hands-on-deck approach' from the governor's office on down. Florida has not followed any of its recommendations, such as launching a statewide public awareness campaign, holding schools accountable for reducing absenteeism or publishing a real-time attendance dashboard. The state hasn't even adopted common measurements for tracking absent students. And when Attendance Works this year contacted all 50 states seeking their latest data and information on absenteeism, Florida was the only one that did not respond, according to the advocacy group's report released Tuesday. The state's indifference has left districts on their own, notching defeats and some small victories, like Ivan, who ultimately realized his behavior was undermining his future. 'This was little kid stuff,' the Valencia College student said of his former patterns. But there are not enough Ivans. The news organizations' analysis of attendance data since 2018 found that: •Absenteeism is most pronounced among high school students, with 37% of students missing a large amount of school in 2023-24, up from less than a quarter pre-pandemic. Chronic absenteeism also surged in elementary schools, from 18% to 28%, and in middle schools, from 18% to 31%. •Chronic absenteeism in Florida has gotten worse in 66 of the state's 67 counties. The only exception is Hendry County, a tiny district serving fewer than 8,000 kids in southwest Florida. •Absenteeism grew in all of the state's large metro areas, rising from 21% to 35% in Orange County, for example, from 29% to 45% in Duval County, from 19% to 31% in Hillsborough County and from 19% to 28% in Miami-Dade. •At schools where the majority of kids live in poverty, about 35% miss school regularly, compared to 19% for schools where fewer than a quarter live in poverty. At Leesburg High School in Lake County, about three-quarters of the students are economically disadvantaged and chronic absenteeism jumped from just over one-third in 2018-19 to almost 60% last year. But even in wealthier places, schools now wrestle with attendance problems far more often than before the pandemic struck in March 2020. Consider Oviedo High School in Seminole County, the region's most well-off county, where 13.5% of students were chronically absent before COVID-19. That rate has since doubled, sitting at 28.6% last year. The implications are vast. 'If the pandemic was an earthquake, the subsequent rise in absenteeism has been a tsunami that is continuing to disrupt learning,' said Thomas Kane, a professor of economics and education at Harvard University, in a Harvard publication posted in February. Math and reading test scores have dropped since the pandemic, and that can be linked to the large numbers of students who are chronically absent, said Kane, co-author of the Education Recovery Scorecard, which tracks how districts nationwide are recovering from COVID-19. Florida's middle schoolers posted their lowest reading and math scores in more than 20 years on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the 'nation's report card.' The state's fourth graders scored a 20-year low in reading. Florida high school seniors in 2024 posted the state's lowest SAT scores in a decade. Nationally, students also performed worse in 2024 on reading and math NAEP tests compared to before COVID-19. And across the country, chronic absenteeism almost doubled from 16% before the pandemic to about 28% during the 2022-23 school year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Florida's nearly 34% chronic absenteeism rate for that school year ranked 40th nationally, meaning it performed better than only ten other states. To combat absenteeism, local educators say they have tried almost everything, from home visits to find out the why behind the absences to pep rallies and pizza parties that try to make school fun. They offer programs to help students catch up on missing work, partner with nonprofits to provide families with needed social services and sometimes use truancy courts to prod those with the worst attendance records to come to school regularly. They're making inroads, but progress can be slow. Janet Rosario and her daughter Jahlisha, the youngest of her five children, appeared in Orange County's truancy court last month, one of the regular hearings they must attend. That court, overseen by Magistrate Lisa Smith Bedwell, heard 128 cases this year where it can order counseling, community service, and even legal action. Jahlisha, a student at Sally Ride Elementary School in Taft, entered the truancy court system after she missed about 50 days of school during both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. She's missed more than 20 days during the just-finished school year, an improvement but still a serious problem. Talking with Janet Rosario conveys the depth of the attendance challenge. Until March when they moved into an apartment, Rosario, her husband and their children were living out of Central Florida hotel rooms, with the seven-person family often crammed into one room with two beds. Rosario said the family doesn't own a car, so their transportation challenges coupled with her long work hours at a restaurant and the family's housing problems sometimes meant school attendance wasn't top priority. Two of Rosario's other children are in truancy court too. That May afternoon in the hearing room, Jahlisha sat next to her mother with a pair of headphones around her neck. She said little but exchanged smiles with the court's bailiff when she walked in. Rosario explained to Bedwell why Jahlisha had missed three more days of school since their last hearing: a stomach bug going around the family. 'You can see it in her eyes … she's not 100% today,' Rosario said to the magistrate. She also told Bedwell that she hoped that the family's constant moves were over and that Jahlisha would be in school regularly in the coming academic year. Rosario told a reporter later that she knows it is important for her children to be in school, and she worries when they are not. 'Why do you want to have them locked up in a hotel? They think too much. They're stuck in four walls, and they just look around,' Rosario said. Across Central Florida, school officials labor to translate realizations like Rosario's into better performance. Kelly Maldonado, principal of Forsyth Woods Elementary School in Azalea Park, visits four or five of her students at their homes every week, trying to figure out why they're missing so much school. All of Forsyth Woods' students are from economically disadvantaged families. Before COVID-19, about 22% of its student body missed 10% of the school year. Last year, 38% were absent that often. Maldonado once visited the family of a first-grader who had missed more than 150 days of school since kindergarten. The student's father had passed away, the mother was struggling with her mental health, and the child had moved in with their grandparents, who weren't bringing him to school. The mother felt ashamed that her son had missed so much school. 'I just gave Mom a hug, and I said, 'No one's here to judge, no one's here to place blame. We just want the baby in school. We just need him to come back to school.'' she said. The student returned the next day, and has only missed 10 days of school in the last four years, something Maldonado calls her 'greatest success story' as a principal. The bottom line: 'If they're not here, if they're not sitting in that classroom, they cannot learn,' she said. At Central Avenue Elementary School in Kissimmee, Amber Blondman spends her days trying to reach the families of absent students. All the school's students are from low-income families and the percentage of chronically absent students hit 44% last year, up from 34% before the pandemic. But families struggling financially often change addresses and cellphone providers, making them hard to track down. Blondman, who oversees the campus' attendance efforts, estimates she gets one response for every seven phone calls, emails and texts she sends to parents. When she does reach families, she often learns of serious struggles. And sometimes, Blondman finds a child who just doesn't want to come to school — and a parent who doesn't force the issue. One of the school's kindergartners this year racked up almost 60 unexcused absences by March. She didn't like school, her mother told Blondman, because she fell on the playground back in August. Blondman and other school staff met with the mother and daughter, stressing the importance of daily attendance and suggesting a way to change the 5-year-old's attitude. 'We created a plan where, if she came to school every day for a week, on Friday, mom would take her out to ice cream,' Blondman said. 'It made her want to come to school.' At Evans High School in Pine Hills, Tequila Dillon's daughter liked school before the pandemic hit, but the Orange teenager's time doing online classes changed things. Jon'Tayasia Dillon-White returned to campus as a 10th grader, but most days she skipped, with her grades plummeting as a result. She fooled her mother for a while, telling her on many mornings she was getting ready for school but going back to bed as soon as her mother left for work. 'I didn't want to listen to my mom,' the teenager said. 'I didn't want to get up and go to school.' When someone from Evans knocked on their door, Dillon learned how many school days Jon'Tayasia had missed and that both of them could be headed to truancy court. Evans offers a noon-to-5 p.m. catch-up program for students, one that predates the pandemic but has proved crucial since. It is a way, administrators say, to reconnect students to Evans High in a smaller setting with a schedule more appealing to those constantly skipping. In that program, Jon'Tayasia made up missing work and by last May had earned enough credits to graduate. Evans High, where almost all students are from low-income families, has knocked down its chronic absentee rate in the past few years but it was still at 55% last year, meaning almost 1,500 students skipped at least three weeks of classes. That's an improvement from the 2021-22 school year when it topped 67%, but far above the 45% rate before COVID. Kenya Nelson-Warren, Evans' principal, said she's open to almost any tactic to combat attendance problems, even if that means heading to a nearby fast-food restaurant. There she and a dean sometimes look for students who, after they've been dutifully dropped off by their parents, have walked off campus. 'This is not Evans High School,' Nelson-Warren will shout to the teenagers hanging out or sleeping at the restaurant's tables. 'You aren't learning here at McDonald's.' During the pandemic, when all classes went online, students could find assignments and class resources on their laptops. Now, some think they can do whatever work their teachers post, and that means being in class is optional, she said. But missing class means they miss instruction, practice and discussion — and that makes it hard to fully learn the material, particularly in math, where students lost the most ground because of COVID interruptions. 'You're trying to complete the assignment blindly,' Nelson-Warren added. Schools' efforts to combat absenteeism matter, but so does a state's, said Hedy Chang, executive director and founder of Attendance Works. 'State leadership to reduce chronic absence is crucial to ensure that all schools and districts, not just a few innovators, have the tools and skills to support excellent attendance,' she said in a statement released with the group's recent report. State Rep. Dana Trabulsy, R-Fort Pierce, sponsored bills this year and last that would have been a small step toward that goal for Florida, requiring common standards for measuring absenteeism. Currently, each school district can decide how many hours of a school day students can miss and still be counted as present. 'We can't allow them to be the lost generation,' Trabulsy said after the 2024 legislative session. But her proposed legislation never got out of committee last year and this year, though it passed unanimously in the House, it died in the Senate, which never took it up. Senate leaders view attendance as a local matter best tackled by school districts, said Katie Betta, a spokeswoman for the Senate president's office. 'There is no question that absenteeism is a problem, but the question is whether interventions and solutions should be determined at the district level, or dictated from Tallahassee,' she said. 'The Senate has generally taken the position that individual school districts know their communities best and are better able to design, implement, and maintain their own policies.' Experts question that approach. Kane, the Harvard researcher, agrees with Attendance Works that state and local governments should do more. He suggests making absenteeism a public cause. 'Most mayors can't teach algebra one, but they could do a public information campaign,' he said. Indiana, he said, posts a regularly updated attendance dashboard on its education department website. The state's legislature also just passed a law requiring the Indiana Department of Education to study absenteeism, collect data on the reasons students are missing school and publish the information each year. Last year, Indiana's chronic absenteeism rate dropped to below 18%, its lowest mark since the pandemic, though still above the about 11% rate it had in 2019. Ivan's attendance record turned around after he was offered a place in Evans' noon-to-5.p.m. program and encouraged to consider the offerings at the local technical college. A welding class intrigued him. Soon missing so many school days stopped making sense. Ivan graduated from Evans in May 2024 and then enrolled in Valencia's welding technology program. He is slated to graduate from the college program at the end of this month. 'I needed to calm down,' he said. 'I was getting too old.' ------------
