An unvaccinated, school-aged child in West Texas has died from measles, marking the first fatality in an outbreak that began in late January and has infected at least 124 people so far, about 80% of them children. This is the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015 and the outbreak is the state’s largest in nearly 30 years.
Only five of those infected so far are vaccinated. The remaining patients are either unvaccinated or their vaccine status is unknown.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly confirmed head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has a long history of sewing skepticism around vaccines, including the one for measles. He recently put vaccine advisory meetings — where a panel of experts establish a vaccine schedule used to inform state policies — on indefinite hold and wields power over how organizations within HHS, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, respond to such crises.
Earlier this month, his anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, put out a statement blaming the Texas outbreak on the vaccines themselves, arguing, “The real issue is not a failure to vaccinate but a failing vaccine.”
“As measles outbreaks continue to surface, the mainstream media is now using them as a political weapon, attempting to blame … Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for so-called ‘anti-vaccine rhetoric,’” the statement read. “His warnings about vaccine-induced injuries and failures are validated by the very outbreaks being reported today.”
Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer at The Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based education advocacy organization that promotes childhood and adult immunization, said she is “just absolutely flabbergasted that there is intentionality to put blame on the vaccine when that is not where anybody should be spending their time or their effort. Our effort should be supporting families, making sure they’ve got the right information and supporting helping our public sector partners so we can try to get to the end of this crisis sooner rather than later.”
“CDC is aware of the death of one child in Texas from measles, and our thoughts are with the family,” Andrew Nixon, director of communications at HHS, wrote in a statement to The 74. “CDC continues to provide technical assistance, laboratory support, and vaccines as needed to the Texas Department of State Health Services and New Mexico Department of Health, which are leading the response to this outbreak.”
There are now also at least nine reported cases in neighboring New Mexico.
Kennedy told reporters Wednesday that he’s following updates on the outbreak, which he noted was mainly in the Mennonite community. Despite the confirmed death of a child, Kennedy appeared to downplay the spread, saying, “It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
Measles were declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but there’s been a resurgence of cases as vaccination rates have dropped.
Mary Koslap-Petraco, a pediatric nurse practitioner who treats underserved children in New York state, said that when she heard about the child’s death Wednesday morning, “Quite frankly, I broke down in tears. This was [99%] preventable.”
She placed much of the onus on the anti-vaccination movement, saying they planted “seeds of distrust” that ultimately scared parents.
“I know this family only wanted the best for this child,” she said, “and I’m really sorry that they weren’t able to encounter someone who could help them through this misinformation that they’re hearing to feel comfortable enough to vaccinate their child.”
‘Primed for something like this to happen’
Measles is a highly contagious viral respiratory infection, which can be serious and sometimes fatal in children. If one person has it, up to 9 out of 10 people nearby will become infected if they are not protected, though spread is preventable through the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which is safe and about 97% effective. The infection is often marked by a high fever, sore throat and rash; more severe complications can include pneumonia and swelling of the brain.
In a statement Wednesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said the best way to prevent measles is through the vaccine. The department said it was “working with local health departments to investigate cases, provide immunizations where needed, and keep the public informed.”
Texas is one of 18 states that allow school-aged children to opt out of vaccine requirements for medical, religious or “personal belief” reasons.
The majority of measles cases so far are in Gaines County, a small, rural county in West Texas, with one of the state’s highest vaccine exemptions rates: 14%, up from just over 4% a decade ago. And the actual number of unvaccinated kids in the county is likely significantly higher, because there’s no data for the many children who are homeschooled, according to reporting from the Associated Press.
Some of the initial cases appeared to be connected to private religious schools.
To be exempted for “reasons of conscience,” a parent or legal guardian has to submit a signed and notarized form to the school. Under certain circumstances — like an official emergency or epidemic — these students might not be allowed to go to school.
None of the four public school districts serving Gaines County immediately responded to a request for comment. The county’s small Loop Independent School District reported that 47.95% of K-12 students had a conscientious exemption for immunizations in 2023-24. The statewide vaccine exemption rate is 2%.
(The Immunization Partnership)
“We know based on a ton of research that these kinds of exemptions cluster,” Lakshmanan said. “They cluster geographically, they cluster in schools, they cluster in neighborhoods, they cluster in faith-based communities. Sadly we are seeing the practical reality of this type of loophole … when we start to see high exemption rates, we are bound and we are primed for something like this to happen.”
Kindergarten measles vaccination rates in Texas generally have fallen to below 95% since the pandemic, though they still remain just above national averages, according to a recent data analysis from The New York Times.
A number of Texas parents who previously had not vaccinated their children are now changing course. “We’ve vaccinated multiple kids that have never been vaccinated before, some from families that didn’t believe in vaccines,” Katherine Wells, director of public health for Lubbock’s health department, told NBC News.
Yet, as the outbreak spreads, Texas lawmakers are preparing to consider bills that would further loosen exemption requirements.
“Now is not the time to be playing a game of roulette with children’s lives or Texans’ lives and even contemplate making the exemption process easier,” Lakshmanan said.