Measles were officially eliminated from the United States in 2000 but thanks to international travel and unvaccinated individuals, we still have outbreaks from time to time. The current outbreak, which started in 2014 and continues today is the biggest since 1996 with 644 cases reported last year and 102 last month alone (that’s more than are typically reported in a whole year). The good news is that we have a measles vaccine that’s about 97 percent effective. Before the vaccine came around, according to the CDC, about 3 to 4 million people got the measles every year in the U.S. Now we consider 644 to be a severe year. The bad news is, not everyone is vaccinated.



A growing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, putting other unvaccinated kids, the elderly, the very young, patients with cancer and other conditions that prohibit them from being vaccinated, and a small percentage of vaccinated kids at risk. The measles — a viral infection of the respiratory system, immune system, and skin — is so contagious that 90 percent of people who are not immune will catch it if exposed to someone who has it.

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The AJC has published an in-depth analysis of Georgia vaccinations, including searchable stats for kindergarteners at individual schools. They obtained the data via the Georgia Open Records Act because Georgia is not one of 18 states that publishes those stats online. Nor is it one of the states that requires a doctor’s signature before parents can opt out of vaccinations. They note that “Children attending more than 200 Georgia schools are in classrooms where vaccination rates fall short of the level needed to protect them from catching and spreading a variety of diseases.”

We have crunched the data obtained by the AJC to find out which metro counties have the highest rates of vaccination. According to the AJC, “Experts say a vaccination rate below about 90 percent increases the community risk of vaccine-preventable diseases,” so we set the bar there. The red areas represent schools that fall below that threshold. We disregarded schools with no data. We wanted to provide percentages to allow for side-by-side comparison, but because that method disadvantages counties with fewer schools (for example, Cherokee and Forsyth’s percentages are second and third highest but when you look at the actual number of schools with vaccination rates below 90 percent, four counties fare worse). We provided both for your reference. You can look up individual schools and get additional information, such as the number of students and the number of “exemptions” (students opted out for medical or religious regions) on the AJC.

