Texas outbreak brings 1st US measles death since 2015

What happened

An unvaccinated school-age child in West Texas has died of measles, state health officials said Wednesday. It was the first known U.S. measles-related death since 2015, and the first child to die of the highly contagious but preventable disease since 2003, according to the CDC. At least 124 people in nine counties have been diagnosed with measles since the outbreak started in late January, Texas health officials said, making it the state's largest measles cluster since 1992.

Who said what

The outbreak is concentrated in a "close-knit, undervaccinated" Mennonite community in rural Gaines County, Texas health department spokesperson Lara Anton said. The child who died and about 20 other unvaccinated measles patients were treated at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, many of them needing help breathing and other intensive care.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "downplayed the news," The New York Times said. The "prominent vaccine skeptic" said federal health officials were "following" the outbreak and it wasn't the first one this year, "so it's not unusual." He also "appeared to misstate a number of facts," The Associated Press said, including claiming two people had died in the outbreak and the hospitalizations were "mainly for quarantine." Covenant does not "hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes," hospital chief medical officer Dr. Lara Johnson said at a press conference.

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Measles was "considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000," thanks to "widespread use of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR)," NBC News said. But national immunization rates for measles "fell during the Covid-19 pandemic" and have "not rebounded to the 95% required to stem" community spread, the Times said. Kennedy and other anti-vaccine campaigners "have often targeted the MMR vaccine," though he said he supported the measles shot during his recent confirmation hearing.

What next?

The "reality of this outbreak is pushing more people to get vaccinated" in West Texas, The Wall Street Journal said, and Lubbock health officials reported that more than half of the 100 excess MMR immunizations administered over the past two weeks went to never-vaccinated children. In Washington, the FDA Wednesday canceled an upcoming federal advisory committee meeting to "help select the makeup of next winter's influenza vaccine," The Washington Post said. It was the second vaccine advisory meeting "postponed or canceled" since Kennedy was sworn in.