Texas public health authorities have announced that an outbreak of measles in the western part of the state has expanded, and a new case was “confirmed nearby across state lines in New Mexico.”
So far, the Texas Department of State Health Services has “identified 24 measles cases in connection with the onset of symptoms within the last two weeks. Gaines County, a small county in West Texas, has one of the highest rates of vaccine exemptions in the state.” Nine of the patients in Texas have been hospitalized.
Measles is highly contagious and can survive in the air for up to two hours, but case numbers dropped precipitously after the introduction of a vaccine in 1963. However, Texas law allows “children to get an exemption from school vaccines for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs. The percentage of kids with exemptions has risen over the last decade from 0.76% in 2014 to 2.32% last year, according to Texas Department of State Health Services data.”
With the Senate voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary on Thursday, concerns around measles are rising, given Kennedy has “embraced the debunked theory linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.” The majority of the cases seen in outbreaks in Texas and other states so far this year are “among the unvaccinated.” The CDC recommends that “at least 95% of people get two doses of the MMR vaccine” to prevent outbreaks of the disease, but vaccination coverage rates among kindergartners has dropped to 92.7% as of 2023-2024, and “many states have lower than 90% coverage.”
Matt MacKenzie | Associate Editor
Matt is Associate Editor for Healthcare Purchasing News.
