After Vermont banned personal-belief exemptions, the number of kindergartners with religious exemptions from vaccination suddenly shot up — from 0.5 percent to nearly 4 percent. Photo by whitesession/Pixabay

When parents can no longer get “personal-belief” exemptions from childhood vaccinations, they may get around it by asking for religious exemptions for their kids, a new study finds.

Researchers found that after Vermont banned personal-belief exemptions, the number of kindergartners with religious exemptions from vaccination suddenly shot up — from 0.5 percent to nearly 4 percent.

That kind of increase almost certainly means that many parents who wanted to avoid vaccines simply switched tactics, according to Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who was not involved in the study.

“Either parents in Vermont suddenly became very religious, or they started using religious exemptions as a replacement,” said Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

He said the more than sevenfold increase in religious exemptions among kindergartners is worrisome. Since vaccination only works as a public health strategy when enough people are immunized.

And it’s likely, Offit noted, that exemptions were concentrated within certain communities.

With old childhood diseases like measles and mumps making a comeback in recent years. A number of U.S. states have tightened up their laws on vaccine exemptions. Several states that used to allow kids to skip vaccines due to parents’ “personal beliefs” no longer do.

Vermont is one, having eliminated its personal-belief exemption in 2016.

But parents there can still ask for exemptions based on religious beliefs — as is the case in 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

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