Childhood immunization rates for most vaccines have been falling since the pandemic, a CBC News analysis of provincial data has found, raising concerns among public health officials about increased vulnerability to infectious disease.
There’s no one reason for the drop, according to Dr. Jia Hu, the interim medical director of immunization programs at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. COVID-19 pandemic-associated disruptions and declining public confidence in vaccines are likely two driving factors, he said.
“I think all of that put together, you know, does put us at higher risk of vaccine preventable diseases,” he said.
“The decline might be in the range of five per cent, 10 per cent for some antigens. But, you know, it’s still significant and obviously really concerning.”
Urban-rural divide
CBC’s analysis of the data, which covered a 10-year period between 2015 and 2024, found childhood immunization rates were both lower and generally dropped more in the Interior and the North compared with Vancouver and Victoria, where rates were more consistent.
This was especially true of measles.
Canada lost its measles-free status late last year after an outbreak that started in 2024 persisted for more than a year, infecting more than 6,000 people.
In B.C., that outbreak was concentrated in the province’s northeast, where more than 400 people got sick. That region and the northern Interior saw drops in measles vaccination rates at ages two, seven, and in Grade 6.
Provincially, all regions saw a drop in coverage at ages two and seven, but rates were steady for Grade 6 students.
Challenges around rural geography, physically getting to appointments and changing attitudes around vaccines all likely contributed to the decrease in coverage in the North, said Dr. Rakel Kling, a medical health officer for Northern Health. But immunization rates in the northeast increased by 70 per cent in 2025, she added.
“It shows that people are interested in getting the vaccine and understanding that there are risks with measles circulating in the area.”
Pandemic impact
Multiple experts interviewed by CBC noted the declines in childhood immunization coverage started around the time of the pandemic.
Dr. Bernie Garrett, an emeritus professor at the UBC School of Nursing, doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.
“Particularly since COVID, we have this mistrust in government … and pharmaceutical companies, as well with some of the practices they’ve done, but also in public health institutions. So that’s common and maybe more so in rural areas,” he said.
“Also there’s a bit of anti-intellectualism and distrust in experts which correlates with the hesitancy for vaccine uptake. So overall this reflects a broader epistemic shift, I’d say, where scientific authority-based knowledge is increasingly contested, and faith-based knowledge has become more prioritized.”
Polling of doctors and nurses conducted by Leger last winter found a 34 to 35 per cent increase in vaccine hesitancy among Canadians over the last five years. The main reasons, cited by health care professionals in their conversations with patients, were safety concerns, misinformation from social media influencers, and mistrust in government or public health.
Immunization rates have also plummeted in the U.S., where vaccine-preventable illnesses not seen for decades are sending infants to emergency departments.
Hu called the messaging coming from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the efficacy of vaccines “a huge problem” for public health officials in B.C. because they confuse people about whether vaccines such as human papillomavirus (HPV) are necessary.
“It’s hard to sort of exactly assess the impact of these things in our coverage rates, but you know, anecdotally it’s created a lot of questions, I think, amongst providers and patients alike.”
Vaccine refusal
The B.C. data gives the percentage of two- and seven-year-olds whose parents or guardians refused all vaccines: one per cent for both age groups in 2024. But in some regions, it was higher, notably:
- North Vancouver Island: four per cent for two-year-olds; three per cent for seven-year-olds
- Central Vancouver Island: four per cent for two-year-olds; two per cent for seven-year-olds
- East Kootenay: five per cent for two-year-olds; two per cent for seven-year-olds
There are also significant numbers of two-year-olds for whom there are no immunizations recorded. Provincially, this figure increased to 11 per cent in 2024 from seven per cent in 2015, but it was much higher in some places: 25 per cent in the Northeast and 20 per cent in Kootenay-Boundary.
This could be due to vaccine refusal, but some of it is because immunizations given by family doctors don’t always make it into public health data, according Dr. Monika Naus, a professor at the UBC’s School of Population and Public Health.
Doctors give immunization records to parents, who are then responsible for submitting them to public health, she explained. This does not always happen, so the public health record is incomplete. Merging patients’ electronic health records with the immunization registry would eliminate this problem, she said.
Another missing data point is children who leave the province. Public health doesn’t always know if they have moved, Naus explained, so they may appear in the data as unvaccinated. Both these things could make B.C.’s immunization rates appear lower than they really are, she said.
To turn things around, Hu said it’s important for public health officials to build trust in communities and “get local as much as possible.”
“I think people can sort of read the science and they can do their own research. But really I think a key part of what drives individual decision making is if somebody who they trust is recommending it to them, right? And we need more of those trusted messengers out there.”
