7-29-2023 3:57pm

Otero County 99 Percent Immunization Compliance Free Shots for Kids

Chris Edwards Editor

Hey, Otero County it is back to school time and it’s important in order to enroll in schools, to ensure all children, have an up to date record, of the immunizations! Immunizations are a condition requirement to enroll in any New Mexico School System and education is compulsory. New Mexico law requires children between the ages of 5 to 18, the age of majority, to attend school.

All 50 states plus the District of Columbia have legislation requiring specified vaccines for students and compulsory education.

Although exemptions vary from state to state, all school immunization laws grant exemptions to children for medical reasons. There are 44 states and Washington D.C. that grant religious exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations.

Currently, 15 states allow philosophical exemptions for children whose parents object to immunizations because of personal, moral or other beliefs, New Mexico is NOT one of the 15.

Many states align their vaccine requirements with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. At this time, California and the District of Columbia require children to receive a FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine for school entry in 2022, New Mexico does not have that requirement. Some cities, counties and school districts have added COVID-19 vaccine requirements for certain age groups or for certain activities such as participating in sports.

The New Mexico vaccine advisory committee recommended that students attending public schools statewide should be vaccinated against COVID-19, but stopped short of seeking to add the vaccine to the state's list of required immunization last year and that decision remains this year.

Thus entry requirements will be similar to last year in Otero County and in New Mexico. The required vaccines continue to include vaccines for hepatitis A and B, Measles/Mumps/Rubella, Polio, Tetanus/Diptheria/Pertussis, Haemophilus Influenzae type B, Pneumococcal, Meningococcal, Varicella, Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis.

In New Mexico, 1,989,307 people or 95% of the state has received at least one dose of a Covid 19 vaccination. Overall, 1,582,545 people or 76% of New Mexico's population are considered fully vaccinated.

Specific to school immunization requirements a list of immunizations and exemption forms for the 2023-2024 School Year can be found at https://www.nmhealth.org/publication/view/policy/7917/

Please be aware of the high school Meningococcal Men ACWY second dose requirement. Free County Vaccination…

New Mexico Department of Health in March announced a statewide trend of decline in the immunization rate of school-age children, reporting that the rate of kindergarten-age children who have received the measles, mumps and rubella immunization has dropped from 97% in 2020 to 94% in 2022.

The estimated benchmark for herd immunity for measles is 95%.

According to NMDOH, individual county’s vaccination rates for school-age children vary greatly, from a high of 95.19% in McKinley County to a low of 67.88% in Catron County. San Juan County is midrange at 89%.

NMDOH Deputy Secretary Dr. Laura Parajon said in a news release, “There is no better time to schedule a well-child visit to keep your child up to date on their immunizations than right now. All vaccines are tested to make sure they are safe and effective. Immunization can save your child's life from life-threatening illnesses like polio and measles.”

Measles is highly contagious. Among those who are not vaccinated, nine in 10 exposed persons will become infected, according to the CDC.

Only two cases of measles have been confirmed by NMDOH in New Mexico in nine years. An unvaccinated Santa Fe County child contracted the illness in 2014, followed in 2019 by a Sierra County case. Regardless of low infection rates, experts believe that a decline in vaccinations could lead to unnecessary infection. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, measles claimed 2.6 million lives annually worldwide.

Dr. Larry Pickering, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Atlanta, told the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, “Until better global control is achieved cases will continue to be imported to the U.S. … outbreaks will persist as long as there are communities of unvaccinated people.”

All children are eligible to receive free vaccinations through the federally funded Vaccines for Children program via the county health department.

While the dialog around immunizations can get testy and there is a lot of rhetoric around them the fact is in most counties in New Mexico including Otero County a majority of parents comply with vaccination requirements. Fewer than 15o kids are enrolled in schools locally without vaccinations out of over 12,000 enrolled.
That statistic holds true over many years; looking forward and backward. Otero County Schools trend between 98% to 99% complete immunization rates of all children ages 4 to 18. Los Alamos, Taos and Catron county lead in percentage of exemptions but each have a lower number of children in those communities as a percentage of population. Taos had the lowest immunization rate at 97% of youth fully immunized.

A record of immunization by county over the last several years can be found via the linked pdf file Immunizations by County and Exemptions

More current information and deep dives data by category and immunization type is available and updated on the New Mexico Department of Public Health Site:
https://www.nmhealth.org/about/phd/idb/imp/sreq/