An increase in COVID-19 and flu infection rates could get worse in coming weeks, fueled by holiday gatherings and low vaccination rates. CBS News’ Lilia Luciano shares what you can do to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
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A record number of American kindergarten students started school last year with an exemption from one of the key vaccines health authorities require, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the report published Thursday, the CDC examined immunization program data to assess vaccination coverage and exemption status for four childhood vaccines:
Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR)
Diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP)
Poliovirus (polio) vaccine
Varicella vaccine (protects against chickenpox)
Among children enrolled in public and private kindergarten during the 2022-23 school year, the report found vaccination coverage remains lower than the pre-pandemic levels, at 93%, down from 95%.
Vaccination exemptions increased to 3% of kindergarten students — the highest exemption rate ever reported in the country — and a vast majority of those exemptions were not for medical reasons.
“Overall, 3.0% of kindergartners had an exemption (0.2% medical and 2.8% nonmedical) from one or more required vaccines,” the report noted. “Nonmedical exemptions account for (greater than) 90% of reported exemptions, and approximately 100% of the increase in the national exemption rate.”
A medical exemption is allowed when a child has “a medical condition that prevents them from receiving a vaccine,” according to the CDC. Nonmedical exemptions, for religious or philosophical reasons, are allowed in all but three states, the agency says. In recent years, New York and California have passed laws clamping down on nonmedical exemptions after outbreaks of measles.
While the new report did not determine whether the uptick in nonmedical exemptions reflects an increase in opposition to vaccination or if parents are skipping the shots due to barriers or inconvenience, it does come at a time when vaccine hesitancy remains high, a sentiment amplified by anti-vaccine activists during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The CDC stresses the importance of making sure children are fully vaccinated against common and sometimes serious infectious diseases before entering school, since clusters of undervaccinated kids can lead to outbreaks.
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As classes start back up, so do the cases of sickness that so often seem to accompany back-to-school season. But experts say there are ways to help keep students protected.
“Going back to school, there always is an increase in infections when kids are closely around each other and there can be clusters of infections,” says Dr. Evelyn Chan, pediatrician and CEO of digital therapeutics company Smileyscope.
Pharmacies across the U.S. are already contending with an industrywide shortage of the drug amoxicillin, an antibiotic that’s commonly prescribed to treat a variety of childhood infections, including things like ear infections, strep throat and pneumonia.
“There’s lots of common conditions or diseases which are contagious, and the ones that we’re thinking about at the moment (are) COVID, things like RSV have been quite high, as well as influenza,” Chan says. “There’s also the common things like vomiting and diarrhea … and things like chickenpox and others as well.”
The best way to prevent these types of illnesses? Chan suggests three main principles:
Stay healthy: Keep your immune system going strong by “eating nutritious food, getting enough physical activity and sleep,” she says.
Get vaccinated: “Encouraging all children and their families to stay up to date with their immunizations is incredibly important,” she adds. “Go to your annual wellness checks to make sure that you’re visiting the pediatrician and discussing what vaccinations they’re eligible for and answering any questions.”
For example, there are some new options to protect against RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, an illness that typically causes cold-like symptoms but can sometimes be severe, especially for infants and older adults.
In terms of the flu, Dr. Céline Gounder, a CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, recently shared on “CBS Mornings” that September or October is a good time to get your shot.
Practice prevention: “Teach kids ways to reduce infections,” Chan says. “So, wash their hands frequently, sneeze into their elbow, wear masks where possible, stay at home if they have an illness so that they don’t spread it to others.”
Dr. Carol Nwelue, a physician with Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center, recently told CBS Texas that she also recommends telling kids not to share things like eating utensils and combs.
How to prepare kids for vaccinations
Kids can get quite anxious when it comes to needles, which is “totally normal,” Chan says.
“Most children will be anxious and fearful about their vaccinations,” she says. “Even half of teenagers and one in four adults are quite nervous about vaccinations. So I think it’s really about setting the expectations and preparing well.”
She has three tips for making the vaccine process go smoothly:
Inform: Chan suggests telling the child before an appointment that they will get a vaccination, so that they can be prepared.
“Don’t tell them too early so that they fret about it for days. But letting them know before they go to the doctor really kind of helps them prepare psychologically,” she says.
Coping skills: Figuring out some helpful coping tools and mechanisms with kids beforehand can help too.
“This might be bringing in their favorite toy, their favorite movie on their iPad, or thinking about something they can look forward to after that vaccination,” she says, adding that medical teams are starting to use technology as a distraction tool as well.
Chan’s work, for example, uses virtual reality to create helpful distractions that reimagine those sensations patients may be scared about in a different way.
“With Smileyscope, patients pop on a virtual reality headset at the doctor’s office, and they go on an underwater adventure,” she explains. “They get to feel waves washing over their arms when we clean with antiseptic. They look at fish and the fish come in and nibble at their arms — so that’s when the shot happens.”
Because of the way the tool is choreographed to what’s happening in the real world, patients actually are “very surprised when they come out of the VR experience and the shot is already done,” she says.
Keep things positive: Chan says to reinforce the idea that vaccines will help them be healthy and strong. “Keeping it in that positive light is a really important one as well,” she adds.
A summer uptick in COVID cases has sparked interest in new vaccine boosters. CBS News’ Errol Barnett explains when they will be available and who should get one.
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The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine.
After decades of limited success, scientists say research has reached a turning point, with many predicting more vaccines will be out in five years.
These aren’t traditional vaccines that prevent disease, but shots to shrink tumors and stop cancer from coming back. Targets for these experimental treatments include breast and lung cancer, with gains reported this year for deadly skin cancer melanoma and pancreatic cancer.
“We’re getting something to work. Now we need to get it to work better,” said Dr. James Gulley, who helps lead a center at the National Cancer Institute that develops immune therapies, including cancer treatment vaccines.
More than ever, scientists understand how cancer hides from the body’s immune system. Cancer vaccines, like other immunotherapies, boost the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. And some new ones use mRNA, which was developed for cancer but first used for COVID-19 vaccines.
For a vaccine to work, it needs to teach the immune system’s T cells to recognize cancer as dangerous, said Dr. Nora Disis of UW Medicine’s Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle. Once trained, T cells can travel anywhere in the body to hunt down danger.
“If you saw an activated T cell, it almost has feet,” she said. “You can see it crawling through the blood vessel to get out into the tissues.”
Patient volunteers are crucial to the research.
Kathleen Jade, 50, learned she had breast cancer in late February, just weeks before she and her husband were to depart Seattle for an around-the-world adventure. Instead of sailing their 46-foot boat, Shadowfax, through the Great Lakes toward the St. Lawrence Seaway, she was sitting on a hospital bed awaiting her third dose of an experimental vaccine. She’s getting the vaccine to see if it will shrink her tumor before surgery.
“Even if that chance is a little bit, I felt like it’s worth it,” said Jade, who is also getting standard treatment.
Kathleen Jade waits to receive her third dose of an experimental breast cancer vaccine at University of Washington Medical Center–Montlake, in Seattle, on May 30, 2023.
Lindsey Wasson / AP
Progress on treatment vaccines has been challenging. The first, Provenge, was approved in the U.S. in 2010 to treat prostate cancer that had spread. It requires processing a patient’s own immune cells in a lab and giving them back through IV. There are also treatment vaccines for early bladder cancer and advanced melanoma.
“All of these trials that failed allowed us to learn so much,” Finn said.
As a result, she’s now focused on patients with earlier disease since the experimental vaccines didn’t help with more advanced patients. Her group is planning a vaccine study in women with a low-risk, noninvasive breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ.
More vaccines that prevent cancer may be ahead too. Decades-old hepatitis B vaccines prevent liver cancer and HPV vaccines, introduced in 2006, prevent cervical cancer.
In Philadelphia, Dr. Susan Domchek, director of the Basser Center at Penn Medicine, is recruiting 28 healthy people with BRCA mutations for a vaccine test. Those mutations increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The idea is to kill very early abnormal cells, before they cause problems. She likens it to periodically weeding a garden or erasing a whiteboard.
Others are developing vaccines to prevent cancer in people with precancerous lung nodules and other inherited conditions that raise cancer risk.
“Vaccines are probably the next big thing” in the quest to reduce cancer deaths, said Dr. Steve Lipkin, a medical geneticist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, who is leading one effort funded by the National Cancer Institute. “We’re dedicating our lives to that.”
People with the inherited condition Lynch syndrome have a 60% to 80% lifetime risk of developing cancer. Recruiting them for cancer vaccine trials has been remarkably easy, said Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who is leading two government-funded studies on vaccines for Lynch-related cancers.
“Patients are jumping on this in a surprising and positive way,” he said.
Drugmakers Moderna and Merck are jointly developing a personalized mRNA vaccine for patients with melanoma, with a large study to begin this year. The vaccines are customized to each patient, based on the numerous mutations in their cancer tissue. A vaccine personalized in this way can train the immune system to hunt for the cancer’s mutation fingerprint and kill those cells.
But such vaccines will be expensive.
“You basically have to make every vaccine from scratch. If this wasn’t personalized, the vaccine could probably be made for pennies, just like the COVID vaccine,” said Dr. Patrick Ott of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
The vaccines under development at UW Medicine are designed to work for many patients, not just a single patient. Tests are underway in early and advanced breast cancer, lung cancer and ovarian cancer. Some results may come as soon as next year.
Research scientist Kevin Potts works on ovarian cancer cells being grown on a plastic plate at UW Medicine’s Cancer Vaccine Institute Thursday, May 25, 2023, in Seattle.
Lindsey Wasson / AP
Todd Pieper, 56, from suburban Seattle, is participating in testing for a vaccine intended to shrink lung cancer tumors. His cancer spread to his brain, but he’s hoping to live long enough to see his daughter graduate from nursing school next year.
“I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, either for me or for other people down the road,” Pieper said of his decision to volunteer.
One of the first to receive the ovarian cancer vaccine in a safety study 11 years ago was Jamie Crase of nearby Mercer Island. Diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer when she was 34, Crase thought she would die young and had made a will that bequeathed a favorite necklace to her best friend. Now 50, she has no sign of cancer and she still wears the necklace.
She doesn’t know for sure if the vaccine helped, “But I’m still here.”
Importance of vaccination: The purpose of World Immunisation Week is to raise awareness of the need of using vaccinations to protect people from diseases that can be prevented. This week’s goal is to raise people’s knowledge of the advantages of immunisation and to motivate them to get their shots. It is commemorated annually from April 24 to April 30 and represents a significant effort to stop the global spread of deadly diseases.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) works with several national and international organisations to defend communities against illnesses that may be avoided and to spread awareness about World Immunisation Week. The focus of WIW 2023 activities this year will be on raising awareness of the importance of vaccinations and immunisations so that governments may begin successful vaccination programmes that can provide vital information and technical support.
World Immunization Week 2023: Theme
This year’s World Immunisation Week features the theme “The Big Catch-Up” to highlight the necessity for nations to quickly accelerate their progress towards ensuring that everyone, especially children, is protected against preventable diseases. There has been a drop in immunisation coverage as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving many individuals more susceptible to diseases that may be prevented by vaccination.
The theme emphasises the urgent need to enhance access to immunisation services in low- and middle-income countries as well as to make up for missed vaccines.
World Immunization Week 2023: Significance
World Immunisation Week is a significant international event because it promotes an understanding of the value of vaccination and how it protects people and communities from diseases that may be prevented. The week-long campaign emphasises the critical need to guarantee that everyone, regardless of age or location, has access to safe and reliable vaccines.
The importance of vaccinations in improving public health and averting epidemics is highlighted during World Immunisation Week. By presenting accurate information on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the campaign seeks to increase vaccination rates and combat vaccine reluctance.
World Immunisation Week also focuses on building herd immunity. Herd immunity, an indirect defence against infectious illnesses, develops when a sizable portion of a community develops immunity to the disease due to vaccination or prior infection.
For those who cannot receive the vaccination, this type of protection helps avoid the spread of the disease. Measles, polio, and COVID-19 are just a few of the infectious diseases that can be controlled via herd immunity.
Make sure you’re getting a good night’s sleep before and after your next vaccine appointment — it could boost its effectiveness of the shot, a new study suggests.
Sleeping less than six hours around the day of vaccination was associated with a lower antibody response compared to people who slept seven hours or more, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology Monday. The study notes that a person’s antibody response is a “clinically significant biomarker of protection” and “an early indicator of immunity” after vaccination.
“Good sleep not only amplifies but may also extend the duration of protection of the vaccine,” senior author Eve Van Cauter, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, said in a statement.
The meta-analysis reviewed studies of people who received flu shots and hepatitis vaccines, and found the connection between sleep and antibodies appeared especially strong in men. Authors says this difference is likely due to fluctuating sex hormone levels in women.
“We know from immunology studies that sex hormones influence the immune system,” lead author Karine Spiegel, of the French National Institute of Health and Medicine, said in a statement. “In women, immunity is influenced by the state of the menstrual cycle, the use of contraceptives, and by menopause and post-menopausal status, but unfortunately, none of the studies that we summarized had any data about sex hormone levels.”
Authors say more research is needed to understand the sex disparity, the ideal length of sleep and which days around the vaccine are most important for sleep.
But at a time when boosting immunity has been on many minds since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago, these findings might help give people a little bit more control.
“We are going to be vaccinating millions and millions of people in the next few years, and this is an aspect that can help maximize protection,” Spiegel added.
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The Biden administration may soon deploy experimental doses of vaccine to a new outbreak of Marburg virus, officials told an “urgent” meeting convened by the World Health Organization this week, as health authorities are racing to contain the spread of the highly lethal disease in Equatorial Guinea.
The WHO says nine deaths have so far been reported of people with symptoms of Marburg, which like Ebola often include severe fever, diarrhea and bleeding. Up to 88% of Marburg cases have died after being infected in past outbreaks, usually within nine days after symptoms begin.
An additional 16 suspected cases have been identified to date across Equatorial Guinea and 21 more are being monitored, the WHO said. No additional cases have been spotted in neighboring countries, although investigations are ramping up.
“No confirmed cases have been reported in Cameroon or Gabon. But WHO is working with the ministry of health of Cameroon to investigate an alert in that country. We’re also supporting the governments of Cameroon and Gabon to prepare to rapidly detect, isolate and provide care for any suspected cases,” said Tedros.
A regional health official in Cameroon had said Tuesday the country found two suspected cases Monday in an area bordering Equatorial Guinea, Reuters reported. The country’s public health minister announced Tuesday it was stepping up epidemiological surveillance.
Dispatching the experimental vaccine doses could offer a rare window for researchers to test the shots against this contagious Ebola virus relative, which has led to sporadic outbreaks and a handful of infected travelers since it was discovered in 1967.
“WHO is convening the vaccine prioritization committee to identify which candidate vaccines should be evaluated first, and taking steps to prepare for potential trials,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.
Some shots could come from the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center, which had stockpiled some doses for shelf-life testing. There are about 850 doses in vials that were a part of that program, Daniel Wolfe of the Department of Health and Human Services told a Tuesday meeting of the WHO’s consortium, though not all of those would be available.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recently touted early “promising” results from human trials of that vaccine, which is being developed with the Sabin Vaccine Institute based on a neutered chimpanzee adenovirus.
More doses could also begin the months-long process of being packaged into vials, Sabin’s Matthew Duchars said, if the outbreak grows.
The Biden administration had already begun ramping up filling its stockpiles of vaccine into vials, after a recent outbreak of the related Sudan Ebolavirus in Uganda.
“We’re trying to figure out if there is a way to expedite manufacturing and filling of the remaining Marburg bulk drug as quickly as possible,” Wolfe said.
In a statement after the meeting, the NIAID said that it was “in discussions with partners to understand the current situation and future medical countermeasure needs.”
Another government-backed shot that could have doses to spare is from Public Health Vaccines.
That experimental vaccine, which uses a similar approach to the already-approved Ervebo immunization for Ebola, also recently yielded positive results from animal trials and was greenlighted by the Food and Drug Administration to begin initial human trials backed by the U.S. government.
“We have 350 vials available and ready for use in the clinical setting,” said the group’s Joan Fusco.
Scientists at the Tuesday meeting acknowledged that time could be running out to deploy the doses.
“I cannot emphasize enough the requirement for speed for doing any trials. If you look at the past history of Marburg outbreaks, they’re generally quite small. And the interventions that have been put in place have limited their size,” said John Edmunds, who is with MARVAC, the WHO-coordinated consortium developing Marburg vaccines.
No additional suspected cases had been identified in 48 hours, a WHO representative had told the meeting. Officials said Wednesday it was likely all the deaths were part of the same transmission chain.
“Infection control interventions, when they have been put in place, which is currently the situation in Equatorial Guinea at the moment, then the size of the outbreaks have been almost, all but two, curtailed almost immediately,” said Edmunds.
U.S. health officials want to make COVID-19 vaccinations more like the annual flu shot.
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday proposed a simplified approach for future vaccination efforts, allowing most adults and children to get a once-a-year shot to protect against the mutating virus.
This means Americans would no longer have to keep track of how many shots they’ve received or how many months it’s been since their last booster.
The proposal comes as boosters have become a hard sell. While more than 80% of the U.S. population has had at least one vaccine dose, only 16% of those eligible have received the latest boosters authorized in August.
The FDA will ask its panel of outside vaccine experts to weigh in at a meeting Thursday. The agency is expected to take their advice into consideration while deciding future vaccine requirements for manufacturers.
In documents posted online, FDA scientists say many Americans now have “sufficient preexisting immunity” against the coronavirus because of vaccination, infection or a combination of the two. That baseline of protection should be enough to move to an annual booster against the latest strains in circulation and make COVID-19 vaccinations more like the yearly flu shot, according to the agency.
For adults with weakened immune systems and very small children, a two-dose combination may be needed for protection. FDA scientists and vaccine companies would study vaccination, infection rates and other data to decide who should receive a single shot versus a two-dose series.
FDA will also ask its panel to vote on whether all vaccines should target the same strains. That step would be needed to make the shots interchangeable, doing away with the current complicated system of primary vaccinations and boosters.
The initial shots from Pfizer and Moderna — called the primary series — target the strain of the virus that first emerged in 2020 and quickly swept across the world. The updated boosters launched last fall were also tweaked to target omicron relatives that had been dominant.
Under FDA’s proposal, the agency, independent experts and manufacturers would decide annually on which strains to target by the early summer, allowing several months to produce and launch updated shots before the fall. That’s roughly the same approach long used to select the strains for the annual flu shot.
Ultimately, FDA officials say moving to an annual schedule would make it easier to promote future vaccination campaigns, which could ultimately boost vaccination rates nationwide.
The original two-dose COVID shots have offered strong protection against severe disease and death no matter the variant, but protection against mild infection wanes. Experts continue to debate whether the latest round of boosters significantly enhanced protection, particularly for younger, healthy Americans.
The share of American students who started kindergarten this past school year with proof they were vaccinated against diseases like measles and polio has fallen for a second consecutive year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
For the 2021 to 2022 school year, an estimated 93% of the country’s nearly 4 million kindergarten children had recorded getting their recommended vaccines for guarding against measles, tetanus, polio and varicella.
That is down from 94% during the 2020 to 2021 school year and 95% during the 2019 to 2020 school year, before the pandemic, according to the figures published Thursday by the CDC based on data collected from state and local immunization programs.
“It means nearly 250,000 kindergartens are potentially not protected against measles alone. And we know that measles, mumps and rubella vaccination coverage for kindergarteners is the lowest it has been in over a decade,” Dr. Georgina Peacock, director of the CDC’s immunization services division, told reporters Thursday.
The decline has not come with a corresponding rise in parents getting nonmedical exemptions from vaccination requirements, CDC officials said, suggesting some kids may still be able to get caught up on their shots.
“Many of these children are attending school under a policy that’s considered a grace period, or also called provisional enrollment, and this is allowing the family time to either get paperwork submitted to the school or, if the child is in the process of getting their vaccines, giving them enough time to complete all the vaccination series,” the CDC’s Shannon Stokley said.
Some of the decline could also be the direct result of changes in schools themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-three states told the CDC that they had incomplete data from schools, with some facing delays in reporting their figures.
All but four states could reach 95% MMR coverage, the agency estimates, if these kindergarteners with no documented vaccines ended up vaccinated instead of receiving an exemption.
The drop in vaccination coverage poses the latest setback for health officials who had worked to boost coverage among young children against several vaccine-preventable diseases before entering school.
For example, the U.S. had recorded vaccination levels from the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine close to or above 95% for several years leading up to the pandemic — a share that has slipped to 93.5% nationwide.
“The reason that it’s important for children entering kindergarten to have the MMR is because we know that, particularly, measles spreads very quickly, as seen by two outbreaks that we had last year,” Peacock said.
The CDC tallied 118 measles cases last year nationwide, the most since the record multi-state outbreak in 2019.
While the nationwide MMR vaccination rate has fallen among kindergarteners, trends vary widely by state. Some saw drops by more than 5 percentage points, officials said, while others climbed by over 6 percentage points. Nine states are currently below 90%:
Alaska = 78.0%
Wisconsin = 82.6%
Georgia = 83.2%
Idaho = 83.9%
Kentucky = 86.5%
Ohio = 88.3%
Colorado = 88.4%
New Hampshire = 88.7%
Minnesota = 89.0%
Health authorities had previously warned of a slowdown of vaccine orders, suggesting missed check-ups during the pandemic may have led to a drop in vaccinations for younger children.
However, separate results from the CDC’s National Immunization Survey published Thursday looking at children during the first two years of life suggest many of those young kids are still up to date on their shots compared with previous years.
Around 70% of kids born during 2018 through 2019 are up to date on the “combined” series of seven vaccines recommended for these youngest children, which span shots ranging from diphtheria to pneumococcal infections.
“This report did not identify any overall decline in vaccination coverage associated with the COVID-19 pandemic among all children. The youngest children were born in 2019. These children reached age 12 months in 2020 and 24 months in 2021,” the authors wrote.
Some disparities worsened during the pandemic. Vaccination fell among poor children as well as those living in rural areas. Coverage remains lowest among Black children, compared with other races.
A separate report published in November by the agency had also warned of the possibility COVID-19 could lead to long-term declines in routine vaccinations.
That report warned of the risk that a myriad of factors, ranging from eroding trust in institutions to state legislative efforts to weaken vaccination requirements, could upend years of progress on boosting routine vaccinations.
Peacock said the CDC is launching a new initiative to catch up routine immunization levels across all ages, in light of both recent measles outbreaks and last year’s discovery of polio spreading in New York.
“These outbreaks were preventable. The best way to prevent these diseases and their devastating impact on children is through vaccination,” Peacock said.
