More Babies Are Getting Vaccinated Early As Texas Measles Outbreak Continues
Texas's measles outbreak has grown to more than 700 cases since January, requiring the hospitalization of 92 people and leading to the deaths of two unvaccinated children.
But, according to new data, more parents are taking a critical step to protect their youngest kids.
According to Truveta, a health care data and analytics company, 20% of Texas children younger than 2 years old who got a measles vaccine received their measles vaccine early to help prevent the disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention usually recommends children get their measles vaccines starting at 1 year old, but amid the measles outbreak, the CDC said in March that children can get their measles vaccines starting at 6 months old.
Truveta found that the percentage of children getting vaccinated starting at 6 months old in March and April 2025 markedly increased from 2019, when the U.S. had a measles outbreak with a total of 1,261 cases.
Nina Masters, the senior applied research scientist at Truveta, told HuffPost that this data is good news.
'This means that parents are trying to protect their kids early,' she said.
Texas has seen its worst measles outbreak in nearly 30 years. Measles, a viral respiratory illness, is one of the most contagious diseases, and a vaccine is the best protection against it, according to the CDC.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, has been at the forefront of spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines for years. After an unvaccinated 8-year-old Texas girl died of measles last month, Kennedy attended her funeral and then conceded that the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the disease, though he continues to push alternative treatments and describe vaccination as an individual choice.
Katherine Wells, director of public health for Lubbock, Texas' health department, did not respond to HuffPost's request for information, but she told NBC News in February that the city's health department has been vaccinating children from families who didn't believe in vaccines before.
'People are more and more nervous,' Wells told NBC News. 'We've vaccinated multiple kids that have never been vaccinated before, some from families that didn't believe in vaccines.'
Truveta's data only included children who received care from a health care professional at least three times in their first year of life. But Texas' measles outbreak has largely affected the unvaccinated, like the Mennonites, an Anabaptist Christian group whose members are typically underimmunized.
'We do know that because we imposed some criteria that children [should] be seeing a provider three times in the first year of life, this does reflect a population that is seeking health care,' Masters said. 'So if individuals who are not vaccinating their children are also not seeking health care, we wouldn't expect those people to be included in the study.'
Steven Nolt, professor of history and Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, told ABC News in March that the Mennonites who live in Seminole, Texas, in the western part of the state — also known as Low German Mennonites — came from Mexico, where, from the 1920s to the 1980s, they were mostly isolated.
'My point is, the so-called Low German Mennonites from Mexico, now in west Texas, don't have that minimum baseline of mid-20th century vaccine acceptance that we see among Old Order Mennonites and Amish in the U.S. because the folks in Seminole missed the whole mid-century immunization push, as they weren't in the U.S. at that time,' Nolt told ABC News.
Measles Cases In The U.S. Just Hit 1,000. RFK Jr. Still Isn't Taking It Seriously.
RFK Jr. Tells CDC To Go All In On Bogus Vitamin 'Cures' For Measles
RFK Jr. Spreads Misleading Measles Vaccine Claim Amid U.S. Outbreaks
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