The share of U.S. newborns without a documented vitamin K injection within a day of birth rose from 5.2 percent in January 2026 to 8.1 percent in June, a 57.4 percent increase, according to a Truveta analysis of more than a million births. [1] [2] That is a clotting shot, given in the thigh, recommended since 1961. It is not a measles vaccine, and it is not a dashboard fight over how a death is classified.
Truveta pulled electronic records covering more than 140 million patients and identified 1,026,375 infants born to 825,599 mothers between January 2019 and June 2026. [2] Across the full span, 97.0 percent of those newborns had vitamin K documented on the day of birth or the next day. [2] The monthly miss rate then climbed, faster in 2025 and 2026. Truveta put the January-to-June 2026 average miss rate at 6.1 percent. [2] The Independent, reprinting the Reuters investigation dated Tuesday, said the first-half 2026 non-administration rate was 2.5 times the 2019-2024 average and 1.4 times 2025. [1]
Infants are born with very little vitamin K. Without the intramuscular dose, the CDC says they are 81 times more likely in the first six months to bleed in the brain or gut. [1] [2] One in five infants who suffer that bleeding die. [1] The Independent, citing CDC, put untreated severe bleeding at one in 59 births. [1] The American Academy of Pediatrics still recommends 1 milligram by injection within six hours for newborns weighing more than 1,500 grams. [2]
The Independent's frame is political. It dates the 2026 acceleration to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s January decision to drop the birth-dose hepatitis B recommendation and five other childhood shots, and to President Trump's August 10 executive order repeating that demand after a court stalled the change. [1] Kennedy, asked at an April congressional hearing about falling vitamin K administration, denied a role. [1] HHS spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said the agency and CDC are evaluating surveillance on refusals and bleeding events, and blamed "heavy-handed mandates during the Biden administration" for eroded trust. [1] Jamison is the same spokesperson who has been telling outlets the measles dashboard shows zero deaths. This file is the clotting shot. It is not that dashboard.
Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, a pediatrician-scientist at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, called the refusal rates "really terrifying." [1] Dr. Amanda Furr, chief medical officer of Zarminali Pediatrics, said refusals have become common enough that the group now stocks vitamin K in all 45 of its primary-care practices across 13 states, so a missed hospital dose can still be given in clinic. [1] Dr. Sarah Coggins, a neonatologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, still carries a 2013 Nashville cluster in which parents refused the shot as toxic or carcinogenic and one infant was left with long-term brain damage. [1]
Girls missed the shot more often than boys: 8.9 percent versus 7.3 percent in June. [2] Miss rates rose with maternal age, reaching 8.0 percent in January-June 2026 among newborns of mothers 40 to 49. [2] Those are denominators. They are not a motive. What Tuesday adds is a national extract of non-receipt, labeled as such, in a year when the same health department is asking the public to treat a vitamin, a vaccine, and a death certificate as one argument.
-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago