NEW JERSEY – The Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee advanced two pieces of legislation sponsored by its chairman, Senator Joe Vitale, to promote vaccinations in New Jersey.
The first bill, SR-127, would urge New Jersey residents to become vaccinated amid declining vaccination rates and an uptick in measles cases. The second, S-1956, would require automatic registration with the New Jersey Immunization Information System (NJIIS) upon administering a vaccine, unless the individual or their legal guardian provides a written request not to participate in the registry.
The NJIIS is a statewide database that maintains records of individual vaccination histories. Under the current system, individuals born after January 1, 1998 are automatically included in the registry, unless the individual’s legal guardian provides a written request not to participate. Meanwhile, individuals born prior to January 1, 1998 are only included in the registry at their written request.
“With a troubling resurgence of measles across the country and three reported cases right here in New Jersey, we must do more to ensure our residents are up to date on their vaccinations and maintain the 95% threshold for community immunity,” said Senator Vitale (D-Middlesex). “By making the NJIIS registry an opt-out system rather than an opt-in, the state will be able to gather more data to be better prepared for the next pandemic.”
Once declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, measles has once again resurfaced across the country. In 2024, there were a total of 285 reported cases of measles in the United States. For 2025, the number of reported cases has reached 222 in the first three months alone, and new cases continue to be reported every day. New Jersey has had three reported cases in 2025 so far, Vitale said.
Declining vaccination rates across the country and in New Jersey have contributed to these outbreaks. 94 percent of the cases reported in 2025 were among children and adults who were not vaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) declared that only 93 percent of kindergarteners had received their measles vaccination, falling two percent below the threshold needed for community immunity to prevent widespread disease transmission, Vitale said.
