Texas

CDC expects measles outbreak in west Texas to ‘expand rapidly’

Two people have died in outbreak in Gaines county, and doctors fear the spread of the extremely contagious disease

Texas

CDC expects measles outbreak in west Texas to ‘expand rapidly’

Two people have died in outbreak in Gaines county, and doctors fear the spread of the extremely contagious disease

A health workers fills a syringe with the MMR vaccine

A health worker prepares the MMR vaccine at a clinic put in Lubbock, Texas, on 1 March 2025.

A health worker prepares the MMR vaccine at a clinic put in Lubbock, Texas, on 1 March 2025.

A health worker prepares the MMR vaccine at a clinic put in Lubbock, Texas, on 1 March 2025.

A vaccine information packet from the health department in Lubbock, Texas, on 1 March 2025.

The deaths are the first from measles in nearly a decade – and come as a test for the Trump administration’s new health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime critic of vaccines.

Cook said an outbreak curve, familiar to those who watched infections rise and fall during the Covid-19 pandemic, that is still on the “incline”.

His concerns are shared by other local physicians, such as Dr Philip Huang, director of the Dallas county’s department of health and human services, who told local CBS news affiliate: “There’s concern that some of the people in west Texas are going to spread across the country. It’s not slowing down. This is not over, and there will be more cases.”

“Any child dying for a pediatrician is difficult, it’s tough,” said Camp, about how her residents have reacted to treating children with a largely avoidable disease. “Watching them have difficulty breathing, watching them have a rash, seeing them feel very irritable and fussy – and knowing it could be prevented – is hard and disheartening.”

The overwhelming majority of Americans still vaccinate their children, and many are calling Camp to vaccinate early, she said. The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is recommended for children ages 12 to 15 months old. However, measles is so infectious that vaccination coverage lower than 95% can allow its spread. That can make a place like Lubbock vulnerable, even when it is not the center of the outbreak.

The risk has been particularly acute since the pandemic, when more children missed routine vaccinations due to clinic and school closures, and anti-vaccine activists have gained significant political power, enjoying more donations during the pandemic.

RFK Jr, once the nation’s foremost vaccine critic, has responded to the Texas measles outbreak by downplaying the virus’s dangers and the vaccine’s efficacy, framing vaccination as a personal choice, and recommending good nutrition and vitamins.

“Then there’s the rhetoric about vitamin A and cod liver oil,” said Cook, who argues that it’s unhelpful to compare alternative treatments not tested in the US with a vaccine so effective it once helped eliminate measles in the US.

Camp noted that, to some degree, “vaccines are the victim of their own success”.

“When you have people who have never seen the disease,” she said, “it becomes easier to become fearful of the vaccine.”
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