The unfolding crisis over the spread of measles in the US among communities where skepticism towards vaccines is running high has taken a turn for the worse after a person who was hospitalized with the disease died in west Texas, the first fatality in the outbreak that began late last month.
A Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center spokesperson, Melissa Whitfield, confirmed the death on Wednesday. It is the first death from measles in the US since 2015.
The school-aged child who died was not vaccinated, the Texas department of state health services said, and was hospitalized in Lubbock last week after testing positive for measles, per the Texas department of state health services.
Covenant Children’s hospital in Lubbock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The measles outbreak in rural west Texas has grown to 124 cases across nine counties, the state health department said on Tuesday. There are also nine cases across the border in eastern New Mexico.
The outbreak is largely spreading in the Mennonite community in an area where small towns are separated by vast stretches of oil rig-dotted open land but connected due to people traveling between towns for work, church, grocery shopping and other day-to-day errands. Almost 14% of schoolchildren in the region have been granted exemptions from childhood vaccinations.
Cases are concentrated in the “close-knit, undervaccinated” community, state health department spokesperson Lara Anton said. Gaines county, which has reported 80 cases so far, has a strong homeschooling and private school community.
The crisis is in Texas is hitting just as the US Health and Human Services Department (HHS) falls into the hands of the notorious vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr. Donald Trump’s pick as health secretary has promoted the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations are linked to autism, and in one of his first acts in his new job has postponed a public meeting on immunization.
Kennedy on Wednesday said that the HHS is “watching” cases, though he did not provide specifics on how the federal agency is assisting. He dismissed Texas’s outbreak as “not unusual” during the first meeting of Trump’s cabinet members in the president’s second administration.
“We’re following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press it is providing vaccines as well as technical and laboratory support in west Texas, but the state health department is leading the response.
The Texas governor Greg Abbott said through a spokesman that his office is in regular communication with the state health department and epidemiologists, and that vaccination teams are in the “affected area”.
Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to nine out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most children will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.
The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine – which is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases – is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old for the first shot, with the second coming between four and six years old.
Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the Covid-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners – the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks. The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools nationwide.
Last week, Kennedy vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases, despite promises not to change it during his confirmation hearings.
