Parents oppose vaccines: If vaccines for school children are required, almost half of parents will keep their children home, recent poll shows

The vaccine hesitancy has been a real struggle for months now and while health experts were urging people to get vaccinated, starting May the number of daily vaccinated people was declining every day until the Delta variant took off in July.

Meanwhile, vaccines were approved for everyone aged 12 and more in an effort to slow down the spread of the Delta variant. The start of the new school year immediately showed everyone how much vaccines are important since the number of infected students is rising since day one which forced hundreds of schools to switch to virtual learning and close schools.

As the time passes, vaccine requirement in students is slowly becoming a hot topic that bothers every parent one way or another. A decent percentage of the private companies are still struggling to make their employees get the shot, while some others implemented vaccine mandate for workers causing them to lose part of the workforce.

But when it comes to vaccine mandate in children, parents are becoming furious. According to a recent poll, almost half of parents threaten they will keep their children home if they are required to vaccinate them to attend school.

The poll was conducted by Morning Consult and the results show that 43% of parents are strongly opposed to vaccine requirement in students if that is tied up to returning to schools. The same studies indicates that 51% of parents will would prefer their children to be vaccinated before returning to school.

The percentage of parents who are opposed to a vaccine mandate in schools is down by nearly 10 percent from a previous poll conducted in August, which found 51 percent of respondents saying that they will not send their child to school if a COVID-19 vaccine is required.

The parents were also asked if teachers should be vaccinated. Almost 60% of parents believe that all teachers should be vaccinated since they are working with children, a group that is still not eligible for vaccine.

A separate poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found similar results in August, with 58 percent of parents of children between the ages of 12 and 17 saying that don’t want their child’s school to require a COVID-19 vaccine.

Additionally, parents who participates in the Morning Consult poll answered that they think school year should be delayed until the Delta wave slow down. The percentage of those who think that schools are opening way too soon considering the current Covid-19 situation reached 38%, which is the highest ever recorded number since March.

The Morning Consult poll surveyed 493 parents of children ages 5 to 18 from September 1-5.