Kindergarten students have five vaccines that are required to attend school.

Washington County Public Health nurse Lynn Fisher says the same five are required and they haven’t changed. They are DTAP, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), chicken pox, hepatitis B, and polio.

She says herd immunity can help those in the community who are not able to get vaccines, “That is when members of a community, or members of a school, a majority of those people have had the immunization; they will protect other people who cannot get immunizations from the disease, because they are all immunized. They wont’ be able to transmit the disease. And we do have those cases in our schools, we do have children, people maybe forget, we do have children that do get cancer. And we have children undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, or have other immune system problems, and those children can’t always be immunized but they’re still trying to get to school every day. So, we need those children to be protected as well in our communities and in our schools, so having everyone else protected protects them.”

For more information about which immunizations are required at which age for students listen to the Washington Page with Fisher