New school vaccine requirements, students need both doses of chickenpox vaccine before school in the fall

Starting this fall, area high school students must have received their two doses of chickenpox vaccine before they start classes.

This will mark the end of a nine-year Washington State Department of Health chickenpox vaccine implementation plan that started requiring kindergarten students to get their second chickenpox vaccine dose in the 2008-2009 school year.

Every year, the next grade level was required to get two doses of chickenpox vaccine before starting school until the 2015-2016 school year, when seventh and eighth graders were required to get their vaccines, said DOH spokesman Dave Johnson.

Now it’s the big kids turn, and from now on, students at all grade levels must have their two doses of chickenpox vaccine before starting classes.

Johnson said it is difficult for the DOH to tell if the increase in vaccines reduces the number of Washington kids that catch chickenpox, especially with the new vaccine requirements.

“However, this requirement is based on national recommendations that take into account not only the spread of chickenpox but the increased risk of shingles (herpes zoster) for adults who had chickenpox as children,” Johnson wrote in an email interview. “So, there are long term impacts of contracting chickenpox that must be taken into account.”

Students are not required to be vaccinated if they already had two doses of the vaccine, have had chickenpox in the past, or have had a blood test showing they are immune.

“We are strongly encouraging parents to get students of all ages into a provider’s office as soon as possible to get up to date on their required vaccines and avoid a rush before school,” Johnson concluded.

“There are 534 students in eighth to 11th grade who still need to get their second varicella immunization,” Kevin Patterson said, director of Communication for the Tahoma School District.

That works out to be about 22 percent of students in those grades.

Patterson added, the school district will be sending out a reminder to students and their parents sometime this week.

Enumclaw School District nurse Sonja Bookter estimated approximately 325 students at Enumclaw High School will need to update their vaccine as well.

The Reporter reached out to officials at the Kent School District but did not hear back prior to the press deadline.

History of chickenpox

According to the CDC, chickenpox used to be very common in the US, and an average of four million people caught the disease every year in the 90s.

The chickenpox vaccine became available in 1995 and by 2010, 90 percent of children from 1 1/2 to 3 years of age had already received one dose of the vaccine.

Cases of chickenpox declined 45 percent from 2000 – 2005, and another 77 percent between 2006 – 2010 after another dose of the vaccine was recommended.

Eventually, infants that weren’t able to be vaccinated started to feel the effects of such widespread vaccination; from 1995 to 2008, cases of chickenpox among infants less than a 1.5 years of age dropped 90 percent.

The CDC estimates more than 3.5 million cases of chickenpox are prevented each year because of the vaccine, and studies show children vaccinated against chickenpox have a lower risk of developing shingles later in life.

Herpes zoster, also known as shingles, is caused by the reactiviation of same virus that causes chickenpox, known to health professionals as the varicella-zoster virus (VZV).

Anyone who has already been exposed to VZV, even in the form of the vaccine, can develop shingles later in life, especially after 50 years of age.

Children who are vaccinated against chickenpox are less likely to develop shingles because the VZV used in the vaccine is a weakened version of the wild VZV virus, which is what most older adults (40 years old when the vaccine was introduced in 1995) were exposed to.

The CDC reports one in three people in the US will develop shingles in their lifetime. Approximately 96 shingles-related deaths are reported every year.

Unlike chickenpox trends, which have been declining since the introduction of the vaccine, shingles trends are increasing for unknown reasons.

One theory was the exposure to chickenpox as a child increased a person’s immunity to VZV later in life. Now with the increase in vaccines, less children are exposed to chicken pox and that immunity is not developed.

The CDC now believes this scenario is unlikely, because shingles rates started increasing before the chickenpox vaccine was introduced and did not increase faster as vaccinations trends increased over the years.

And while vaccine rates for chickenpox are high, shingles vaccine rates are much lower.

In 2010, it was reported 15.8 percent of adults over 60 received the shingles vaccine, compared to the 90 percent chickenpox vaccine rate in 1.5 10 17 year old children in 2010.

In 2012, the shingles vaccine rate increased to 20 percent.

Free vaccinations

According to the DOH, parents can get free vaccines for all kids up to 19 years old through health care providers participating in the state’s Childhood Vaccine Program.