Christie’s comments also drew attention to his record on vaccinations and his support for parents who say they should have more say in the decision to immunize their children, not just the government, a position that dates back at least to his first campaign for governor in 2009.

These statements also came amid a recent measles outbreak that has left 100 people infected nationally. Though there are no cases in New Jersey, a college student who traveled through New York late last month came down with measles, prompting warnings to fellow Amtrak passengers. In an interview Sunday, President Obama took a firm stand on vaccinations.

New Jersey requires immunizations against measles, rubella, mumps, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, whooping cough, hepatitis B, chicken pox, influenza and meningitis. But New Jersey also allows a medical exemption and one for religious reasons – which Christie’s health commissioner relaxed shortly after the governor took office.

Christie was asked about the measles outbreak and vaccines Monday following a tour of a laboratory just outside Cambridge run by MedImmune, which develops vaccines including FluMist, a nasal spray that immunizes against influenza.

Christie said his four children have been vaccinated, adding “that’s the best expression I can give you of my opinion.”

But he also said he thinks “it’s much more important, I think, what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official.”

“I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide,” he went on to say.

“What I’m saying is that you have to have that balance in considering parental concerns because no parent cares about anything more than they care about protecting their own child’s health and so we have to have that conversation, but that has to move and shift in my view from disease type,” he said. “Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public threat as others.”

About four hours after he spoke to reporters, a Christie spokesman issued a statement clarifying the governor’s earlier comments.

“To be clear: The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated,” spokesman Kevin Roberts said in the statement. “At the same time, different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate.”

Assemblyman Herb Conaway, D-Burlington, a doctor and chairman of the Health and Senior Services Committee, called Christie’s comments “irresponsible.”

“His lack of clarity is very disappointing and, from a medical point of view, disturbing,” Conaway said in a statement.

In early 2011, Conaway called on the state health commissioner to withdraw a rule it quietly changed the previous summer, during Christie’s first year in office, making it easier for parents to obtain religious exemptions from immunization requirements for children entering day care or school.

The new rule says parents cannot be questioned if they declare their objection to a vaccination to be based on religion. In the past they were required to explain how the vaccine conflicts with their religious beliefs.The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children between the ages of 12 and 15 months be administered the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. Another dose is also recommended before the child starts kindergarten.

As many as one out of every 20 children with measles also gets pneumonia, with one out of every 1,000 developing brain swelling that can cause convulsions, loss of hearing and mental retardation, according to the CDC. One or two out of 1,000 with measles will die from it, the agency says.

But Sue Collins, co-founder of the group New Jersey Coalition For Vaccination Choice, said there are also a number of adverse reactions that children can experience after being administered a measles vaccine, including neurological effects and even death. For some parents, those effects can be scarier than their child getting measles, which Collins called a “very mild disease.”

“You get it, then you’re over it and then you have lifetime immunity,” Collins said. “We’ve kind of made it into this crazy, horrible thing.”

Her organization is calling for the current New Jersey exceptions to be expanded to allow parents to make a general conscientious or philosophical objection as well.

“Every parent should have a right to decide which vaccine their children should get, whether it’s a few, all or one,” Collins said.

Sixty-eight percent of American adults believe childhood vaccinations should be required, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center. Along political lines, Democrats tend to be more bullish on the issue, with 76 percent saying vaccinations should be required. A total of 65 percent of Republicans believe vaccinations should be required, the same amount found among independents as well, according to Pew.

And though many believe views on vaccinations are influenced by wealth and education, Pew found little link to either of those factors among those who oppose mandatory vaccinations.

This is not the first time Christie has waded into a high-profile issue of public health. It was in late October last year that he announced a strict, mandatory 21-day quarantine policy for New Jersey that applied to public health workers and other travelers exposed to the Ebola virus while in West Africa.

That policy went beyond what Obama’s administration was recommending, and generated intense scrutiny after a nurse from Maine who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone was forced after flying into Newark to live in a tent outside University Hospital in conditions she openly questioned.

“We heard it a lot during the Ebola discussion and now it seems to have happened again, making these statements about vaccines and sort of balancing parental choice,” the nurse, Kaci Hickox, said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” on Monday.

It’s also not the first time a New Jersey governor has been confronted with tough questions about the vaccination issue while in England.

It was a personal experience of former Gov. Christie Whitman when her daughter was an infant and the family was living in England in the 1970s that she said convinced her of the importance of vaccines.

Whitman successfully fought the government-run health services to get her 6-month-old daughter vaccinated during a whooping cough epidemic, but after receiving the first of several shots, her daughter contracted the disease.

“I think it’s a question of safety for everybody,” Whitman said. “The trouble is, you put your children at risk. You may take them to an event and they’ll encounter another child who hasn’t been vaccinated and your child can get very sick.”

Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute, said Chris­tie’s fairly vague answer led some to believe he was pandering to the wing of the Republican Party that opposes vaccinations.

“That’s not the right answer when you’re under the megawatt spotlight of running for president,” Murray said.

Meanwhile, another likely GOP presidential candidate, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, took to the radio airwaves Monday to talk about vaccines, saying they generally should be voluntary.

“I’m not anti-vaccine,” Paul, an ophthalmologist, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show, according to an audio clip distributed by the Democratic National Committee. “But particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary.”

Paul also reminded Ingraham of the controversy faced by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry during the 2012 presidential campaign. Perry had signed an executive order in 2007 requiring young girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cancer.

In a 2012 debate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota attacked Perry over the order, saying it was an abuse of government power. Facing an outcry from religious conservatives, the Texas Legislature overrode Perry’s order, and while he defended trying to protect women from cancer, Perry said he had made a mistake in the way the order was handled and supported the override.

Washington, D.C., Correspondent Herb Jackson contributed to this article. Email: hayes@northjersey.com and reitmeyer@northjersey.com