NEW ULM — Brown County Public Health Director Jaimee Brand called Minnesota’s declining MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) vaccinate rates concerning Thursday.

“Vaccine rates are steadily decreasing over time. Our vaccine rates used to be above 90%. It is concerning. There is a lot of vaccine misinformation out there,” said Brand.

The latest Brown County MMR vaccination rates are 78.4% for children up to two years old; 83.3% for children 5-7 years old.

More than 90% of Minnesota kindergarten students were fully vaccinated until the 2019-2020 school year, according to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). Fully vaccination rates of kindergarten students have slowly declined since then.

Statistics show about 87% of Minnesota kindergartners have the required two doses of the MMR vaccin

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