
According to the WHO:
Herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining 5% will be protected by the fact that measles will not spread among those who are vaccinated.
The figure for Scotland at 2 years, is 93.9% and at 5 years is 95.2%.
In the England the equivalent figures are worryingly low at 89.2% and 93.4%.
Sources:
I have personal experience of the importance of herd immunity when it comes to protecting the vulnerable and reason to be very grateful to all those who get their children vaccinated and thus protect the vulnerable who cannot get vaccinated.
My son had a violent allergy to eggs which meant that as a baby he could not get the measles vaccine because it was made up in egg albumin. If they had injected him with that vaccine he would probably have blown up. Yet he managed to successfully negotiate mother & toddlers, playgroup and nursery without catching measles and that was down to the fact that vaccine uptake was high so cases were low to non-existent. He was in P1 before he caught measles by which time his immune system had developed sufficiently that he was able to fight it off although it was still bad.
A few years ago the UK lost its ‘measles free’ status and that was mainly down to the low vaccination rates in some parts of England. I did some digging at the time and found that in some places in England the make-up rate was as low as 60%. The controversy over the supposed connection between MMR and autism probably played a part in that.
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Interestingly just saw this on Twitter about vaccinations a report from the Nuffield Trust. Not had time to read it all but interesting graph on childhood vaccination across the 4 parts of the UK. Scotland leads on all categories with Wales a close second.
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/vaccination-coverage-for-children-and-mothers-1#vaccination-in-children
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