As vaccination rates drop, religious exemptions rise

Since the 2015-2016 school year, every Maryland county has decreased in kindergarten MMR vaccination rates. The percentage of students claiming religious exemptions has risen over the past decade at the same time.

County data on kindergarten immunization rates from school years 2015-2016 to 2024-2025. The Maryland Department of Health website is currently updating its kindergarten immunization records to present vaccine coverage rates instead of the previously reported vaccine compliance rates, which included the the number of kindergarteners with an exemption in the total percentage. As of Oct. 9, the website only has data from the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. To access previous years, Capital News Service used the Wayback Machine, an internet archive. Vaccine coverage was calculated from vaccine compliance by removing the percentage of kindergartners with exemptions from the numerator using this formula: (((enrolled*(compliance/100))-((enrolled*(compliance/100))*((medical+religious)/100)))/enrolled)*100. Note: Baltimore City did not have immunization data in the 2019-2020 school year. Somerset county did not have immunization data in the 2020-2021 school year.
Chart: Isabella Carrero-BaptistaSource: Maryland Department of HealthGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper