SPOKANE, Wash. — There are a little more than 2,500 students in Spokane Public Schools that have not been vaccinated against measles.
As of Tuesday, a total of 2,550 students in Spokane Public Schools have not received the MMR vaccination, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, according to Spokane Public Schools Spokesperson Brian Coddington.
For reference, there are 31,904 students in public schools in Spokane, meaning that about 8 percent of students have not received the vaccine against measles.
In addition to the number of students who haven’t received the MMR vaccine, there are currently 1,338 non-compliant students, meaning they have not provided record of their vaccinations and have not applied for an accepted religious or personal exemption, Coddington said.
This is up from Sept. 2017 where the number of non-compliant individuals sat much lower at 884 students or 3 percent of the total student body, according to numbers provided to KREM by Coddington.
2016 was slightly higher with 1,623 students marked as non-compliant in September, according to the numbers given to KREM.
In early Jan., an outbreak of measles began in Clark County. The current number of cases is up to 37 as of Jan. 29, with 36 of those being in Clark County and the other being in King County.
There are currently no reported cases of measles in Spokane County, although county health officials have said they are preparing for the outbreak to spread across the state.
SPS has begun preparing for a possible outbreak in our area. Coddington said school nurses have been contacting parents of children listed on the non-compliant list to encourage vaccination or ask for proof of vaccination. They are also speaking with the Spokane Regional Health District and updating employee health information.
As for children in Spokane County as a whole, 89 percent of children get their first dosage of the MMR vaccine, according to numbers from the Spokane Regional Health District. This number does drop when it comes to the second dosage, with only 74 percent of children receiving the MMR2 dosage.
While there is a drop between the first and second shot, SRHD Public Information Officer Kim Papich said the 11 percent of children who don’t get the first shot are the ones at-risk at getting sick.
According to the CDC, there were 349 cases of measles in a total of 26 states in 2018. Last year represented the second-highest number of measles cases since the disease was eradicated in 2000. The greatest annual number since then came in 2014 when there were 667 cases.
