The current measles outbreak in Texas has doubled to 48 cases in just one week — marking the state’s greatest outbreak of the virus in nearly 30 years — after children and teens in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” community became infected.
As The New York Post reports, at least 13 people have been hospitalized in the Lone Star State under the recent outbreak, which is largely concentrated in rural Gaines County where many children are either homeschooled or attend small private schools, said Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
More cases are expected to be reported in the county and surrounding areas given the contagious nature of the disease, which has also sprung up in neighboring New Mexico, the DSHS said.
Nearly all the cases — 42 out of 48 — have been reported in Gaines County, which has one of the highest rates in Texas of school-aged children who opt out of at least one required vaccine at nearly 14%, according to the DSHS.
Officials state that the percentage is likely higher than reported because it fails to include those who are homeschooled. The number of children who are unvaccinated has more than tripled over the past decade in Texas as the state allows children to get exemptions from school vaccines for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs.
But Anton claimed that religious exemptions are not the reason behind the measles outbreak in Gaines County. “The church isn’t the reason that they’re not vaccinated,” Anton said. “It’s all personal choice and you can do whatever you want. It’s just that the community doesn’t go and get regular health care.”
The DSHS said the state is working with local officials to increase screening and vaccination efforts in the county, with 80 people vaccinated last week through a clinic hosted by the South Plains Public Health District. Along with the Gaines County outbreak, DSHS officials found one case in Lynn County, three in Terry County, and two in Yoakum County.
Forty-two of the cases were reported in children under the age of 18.
The outbreak has surpassed the state’s last big scare of 27 cases in 2013 when a person who visited Asia returned home and interacted with an undervaccinated community, the state reported. The current number nearly matches the 1996 outbreak in the Lone Star State, when officials recorded 49 cases, according to the DSHS’s data.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it sent about 2,000 doses of the measles vaccine to Texas, but the doses are so far being distributed to partially vaccinated kids rather than the unvaccinated. The CDC said that it can only send in its experts to help quell an outbreak if the state requests it, and so far, Texas has not done so.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration terminated hundreds of employees at the CDC, including fellows responsible for key public health roles, according to two sources at the agency. Among them were about two dozen workers who made up the Laboratory Leadership Service, or LLS, a group responsible for training public health laboratory staffers and supporting outbreak response efforts. The two-year fellowship program launched in 2015, focusing on laboratory safety and regulatory compliance.
“We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: ‘the disease detectors.’ If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a current fellow, who was among those who received termination notices, told NBC News. Multiple outlets reported that a larger sister program at CDC called the Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS, known as the agency’s “disease detectives,” was expected to be cut significantly, as well.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the appointed head of the Department of Health and Human Services, has yet to comment on the outbreak.
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