In 2015, pediatrician and California State Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, put the anti-vax movement in his sights with a bill to eliminate personal belief exemptions as reasons for children to avoid vaccines. Since that law took effect in 2016, medical exemptions have quadrupled. In Monterey County, medical exemptions went up by more than 50 percent by the 2018-19 school year – from 32 to 50 – according to the data published by the California Department of Public Health.
School administrators suspicious of such exemptions as veiled excuses written by sympathetic doctors on behalf of anti-vax parents could do nothing but accept them. Pan countered with Senate Bill 276, giving the Department of Public Health the power to scrutinize and revoke any considered invalid. The State Senate passed the bill 24-10 on May 22, and it moved on to the Assembly.
The day before the Assembly Health Committee was set to vote on the bill on June 20, the anti-vax group Moms Across America based in Mission Viejo made dire claims, a foreshadowing of what turned out to be a bitter five-hour fight.
“This is beyond dangerous and is a far greater public health scare than measles will ever be,” the group declared in a press release, arguing the bill takes away “medical freedoms.”
Over the impassioned testimony, the bill passed in the Assembly Health Committee 9-2. It goes to the Appropriations Committee next. If it passes there it will go to the full Assembly. Gov. Gavin Newsom has already said publicly he’ll sign the bill if it’s approved.
Since January, the Department of Public Health has documented 53 confirmed cases of measles and declared four outbreaks in California. The latest kindergarten vaccination statistics for 2018-19 show the vaccination rate dropped slightly to 94.8 percent since the previous year, just shy of the minimum “herd immunity” level of 95 percent.
Monterey County saw an overall increase from 2018 to 2019, from 96.9 to 97.5 percent, despite the increase in medical exemptions.