Unvaccinated child dies of measles in west Texas as outbreak worsens

The unfolding crisis over the spread of measles in the US among communities where scepticism 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 hospitalised in Lubbock last week after testing positive for measles, per the Texas department of state health services.

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.

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.

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Source: The Guardian, 26 February 2025