An expanding measles outbreak in Texas — where the Associated Press reported that an unvaccinated child recently died from the once-rare disease — has reinforced support for a Connecticut law requiring parents to have their kids vaccinated before attending school.
Measles, a highly contagious disease that was once considered eradicated in the United States as a result of vaccines, is in the midst of a resurgence, which experts attribute to widespread vaccine skepticism driven by misinformation.
As parents around the nation have opted against vaccinating their children in growing numbers, states with low vaccination rates have experienced new outbreaks of preventable diseases.
This phenomenon produced tragic results last month in West Texas, where the AP reported that a school-aged child died of the disease amid an outbreak that had grown to 159 patients, as of Tuesday.
Dr. Summer Davies, a Texas-based pediatrician, told the Associated Press that other children — some as young as six months old — have required intubation as a result of the preventable disease.
“It’s hard as a pediatrician, knowing that we have a way to prevent this and prevent kids from suffering and even death,” she told the AP. “But I do agree that the herd immunity that we have established in the past isn’t the same now. And I think kids are suffering because of that.”
The fact that Connecticut has not been among the states grappling with outbreaks of diseases like measles is due, at least in part, to the state’s high vaccination uptake rates.
Late last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released statistics that found Connecticut’s measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine coverage among kindergarteners increased from 97.3% to 97.7% between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.
Why has Connecticut’s vaccine coverage increased even as coverage declined nationally? The change has coincided with a decline in the number of Connecticut parents exempting their children from school vaccination requirements as a result of a 2021 law that phased out non-medical exemptions.
Although the policy has protected Connecticut children from the kinds of outbreaks currently afflicting Texas children, Republicans in the state legislature have attempted to repeal the law and anti-vaccination groups have filed lawsuits seeking to compel courts to strike down the policy.
Those attacks on Connecticut’s statute amid a deadly outbreak in Texas have proponents in Connecticut’s General Assembly vowing to preserve the law.
This week, Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, a Democrat from Norwalk, expressed disbelief at the ongoing attacks on Connecticut’s vaccine policies.
“It’s hard to believe that, even now, anti-vaxxers persist in trying to tear down the very statutes that have protected Connecticut kids from the deadly results we’re seeing play out in Texas,” Duff said.
Proponents of the law say its importance has only increased in the last several months since President Donald Trump installed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken vaccine skeptic, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Duff said it was critical that the state’s policymakers find a way to safeguard Connecticut’s protections from legislation and litigation.
“We can stop bad bills,” Duff said, referencing Democrats’ overwhelming majorities in the state legislature, “but it’s up to the attorney general’s office to stop bad lawsuits. One way or the other, Democrats will fight to protect the laws that are protecting Connecticut kids. No child should be intubated — or worse, die — from a disease we learned how to prevent more than 60 years ago. And they won’t. Not if we have anything to say about it.”
