Rates of protection for children in England from many serious but vaccine-preventable diseases dropped in the past year in what U.K. health officials said was a "concerning trend" that increases the risk of outbreaks.
The figures follow a warning from the World Health Organization (WHO) last month that Britain had now lost its "measles-free" status, three years after the virus was eliminated there. Measles infected more than 230 people in the U.K. in the first quarter of 2019.
Data from Public Health England (PHE) showed that coverage of all 13 routine childhood vaccinations for the under-5s was down by between 0.2 percent and 1.0 percent.