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Health experts says the vaccine - which immunises people against measles, mumps and rubella - is 97% effective in fighting off the dangerous virus.

Other vaccine-preventable diseases would also probably pop up in the coming quarter-century — 190 cases of rubella, 18 of poliomyelitis, eight of diphtheria, according to the Stanford team’s models.

This was not yet understood in the decades before the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine’s approval in 1963, when measles was a common childhood disease that killed some 400 children in the U.S. each year.

The proportion of kindergartners nationwide who completed their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine series dropped from about 95% — the federal coverage target — before the pandemic to less than 93% last school year.

And only 93.1% of kindergarten students had received both doses of their measles, mumps and rubella shots, substantially lower than the 96.2% statewide average.