By Rich McKay
(Reuters) – A child in West Texas has died of measles, state health officials said on Wednesday, the first reported U.S. death from the highly contagious disease in a decade, as a Texas outbreak has grown from a handful of cases to more than 130 across two states.
The child, who was not vaccinated against the disease, died overnight in a children’s hospital, the Texas health department said in a statement.
“We have had so many kids coming in and then obviously we were not prepared, probably, so early in what we are seeing to have a death,” said Amy Thompson, CEO of Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, where the child died in what officials said was the fourth week of the measles outbreak.
During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccine critic who was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services earlier this month, said two people had died in the Texas outbreak. He did not provide details, and health authorities in Texas and New Mexico have confirmed only one death, in Texas.
At least 124 people were known to be infected in West Texas since early February, all but five of them unvaccinated and most of them children, Texas health officials said.
An additional nine cases were announced on Tuesday in eastern New Mexico, near the Texas state line where the outbreak has spread to about 10 counties, Texas health officials said.
Patients have displayed symptoms such as high fever, red watery eyes, nasal congestion, cough and a rash that begins on the face, said Lara Johnson, chief medical officer at the Lubbock hospital. Children have been treated with supplemental oxygen and high-flow oxygen, medication for high fever and IV fluids, she said.
New Mexico’s health department has warned that “because measles is so contagious, additional cases are likely to occur.”
The U.S. death rate from measles, which spreads through the air by respiratory droplets from coughing or sneezing, is 1 to 3 deaths out of every 1,000 reported cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The last U.S. measles death was in 2015, according to the CDC.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Health Services was not available to Reuters for comment, but the agency said in a press release that 18 people were hospitalized with the disease.
The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.
Kennedy was appointed to lead HHS after overcoming resistance from the medical establishment and some members of Congress, and has pledged to protect existing vaccination programs. Last week, he told agency workers he planned to investigate the childhood vaccination schedule, among other things.
‘A BAD ILLNESS’
Lara Anton, a Texas health department spokesperson, told a local ABC affiliate that the ongoing outbreak has hit mostly small children and teenagers, and that the cases were originally concentrated in a “close-knit, under-vaccinated” rural Mennonite community in Gaines County, where children are largely home-schooled.
“It’s all a personal choice, and you can do whatever you want. It’s just that the community doesn’t go and get regular healthcare,” Anton told ABC.
At this time, it is unclear how the first person was exposed, and there is no indication that any early patients traveled outside the United States, Anton told multiple media.
“This will accelerate for a while,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas, and a frequent target of the anti-vaccine campaign.
“It’s a bad illness,” he said, noting that about 20 percent of cases are hospitalized. “Unfortunately, Texas is the epicenter of it because of our very aggressive anti-vaccine movement,” he said.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, meaning there was no continuous transmission of the disease for a year.
In recent years, federal health officials have attributed some outbreaks to U.S. parents refusing to vaccinate their children, Reuters previously reported.
In 2024, there were 285 cases of the disease in the U.S. from 16 outbreaks, up from 59 cases from four outbreaks in 2023.
Texas health officials announced on Monday that more people were likely exposed to the virus after a contagious Gaines County resident traveled to several locations in and around San Antonio, nearly 400 miles (644 km) away.
The City of Lubbock was promoting the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine for unvaccinated children on its website and in free clinics, which started on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Andrew Hay in New Mexico and Chad Terhune in Los Angeles; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
