California rejected 6% of medical exemptions for school vaccinations this year, in hint of fight ahead

As California moves toward requiring all students to be inoculated against COVID-19, state officials have revoked more than 180 medical exemptions granted to families for other required school vaccinations since the start of the year.

The revocations, which reflect a tension that may grow in coming years, came under a new law that seeks to crack down on suspected abuse in the process for forgoing the immunizations that every California student must get.

The California Department of Public Health told The Chronicle that as of early October, it had revoked 182 medical exemptions through a new administrative review process because they did not meet federal guidelines for immunization practices — representing nearly 6% of the 3,136 exemption requests the department had reviewed.

Those waivers were submitted to a state database by the families and physicians of children entering kindergarten or seventh grade, a new school or child care in the 2021-22 academic year.

The denials indicate that some California families probably turned to sympathetic doctors to inappropriately excuse their children from required shots after the state eliminated the ability to opt out six years ago.

And that figure may be a significant undercount, as officials begin to review tens of thousands of waivers that have been granted to public and private school students in recent years. It does not reflect a whole segment of medical exemptions that were overturned this year because the doctors who wrote them have been disciplined by the state. Read more >>>