Upstate South Carolina has highest rate of religious exemptions to vaccine rules
Vaccination rates for Upstate counties in South Carolina have the highest religious exemption vaccine rates in the state, according to data from the Department of Public Health.
In the 2022-23 school year, Spartanburg, Abbeville, Greenville, Oconee and Pickens counties had the five highest rates of use of religious exemptions from required vaccines for students enrolled in public and private schools.
- Spartanburg: 5.95%
- Abbeville: 4.44%
- Greenville: 4.33%
- Oconee: 3.15%
- Pickens: 3.11%
All are Upstate counties, a deeply conservative portion of the state. Each of the five counties voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. The area of the state has consistently voted Republican in other previous elections.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has publicly questioned the safety and effectiveness of the measles vaccine.
The data does not include which vaccines students who used the exemption did not take, but the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is consistently on the list of required vaccines to attend school in the state.
The Department of Public Health reported Wednesday an Upstate resident who was not vaccinated and recently traveled internationally had contracted the measles. It is South Carolina’s first reported measles case of the year as the U.S. has hit its highest amount of measles cases since 1992. Much of this year’s cases have come from Texas.
The percentage of students taking the religious exemption is less than 10% statewide.
The percentage of students statewide using the religious exemption, however, grew between 2018 and 2023, according to the Department of Public Health.
- 2018-19: 1.4%
- 2019-20: 1.59%
- 2020-21: 1.59%
- 2021-22: 1.99%
- 2022-23: 2.47%
Vaccines skepticism has become an increasingly politically dividing issue since the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans have grown skeptical while Democrats remain proponents of vaccination.
DPH would not comment on the political nature of people taking vaccines.
