Latest news with #JohnsHopkinsCenterforHealthSecurity
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Second measles case reported in Leander, Williamson health district says
The Williamson County and Cities Health District is reporting a second measles case in Leander. This case involves an unvaccinated adult, who is no longer in the infectious period, and was not in the county when they were infectious. Anyone who might have come in contact with this person is being notified. It is not clear if this case is related to the first Leander measles case last week. That case involved a school-age child who was infectious between May 15 and May 22. The child's parents were not revealing whether the child had traveled or whether the child had been vaccinated. 'Vaccination is one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent the spread of measles and protect our community,' said Dr. Amanda Norwood, Williamson County and Cities Health District's medical director. 'Two doses of the MMR vaccine offer safe, strong, long-lasting protection. Staying up to date not only safeguards your own health but also helps protect infants, older adults, and others who cannot be vaccinated.' On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health services reported 729 measles cases in the West Texas outbreak as well as 24 other cases throughout the state. Those 24 cases include two in Travis County in February and April and one in Hays County this month. The Hays County case had not traveled to an outbreak area, which made community spread a possibility. "We are waiting, we are being prepared, we are being vigilant," said Dr. Desmar Walkes, the Austin-Travis County public health authority. "We are in communication with our neighboring counties regularly, and we're also in communication with our hospital systems and our health care providers to get them updates. "Everybody is on high alert and everybody is working together with one voice with let's get people vaccinated, and let's get people who we may identify as suspect cases isolated so we can prevent or contain the spread if it should be a case," Walkes said. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases. It spreads by airborne particles and has a 90% infection rate among unvaccinated people exposed to a person with measles. The virus can live on surfaces for two hours after exposure. It also has long-term consequences. "Measles is not just an acute illness," said Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It causes "immune amnesia," which means people can lose their immune protection against other diseases. They also can develop swelling of the brain and other complications years later. If you think you may have been in close contact with someone who has measles and are unsure of your immunity status: Call your healthcare provider or clinic before showing up in person. Ask your provider if medications or a vaccine is appropriate for you based on your health and vaccination history. Call your county health department to report your exposure. Anywhere from seven to 14 days after exposure, initial symptoms may include: Cough Runny nose Conjunctivitis Usually a fever of 103 to 104 Four days later: A rash that starts at the head and works its way down the body. The rash can start as sore spots in the mouth. Inflammation of the lungs Pneumonia from a secondary infection Inflammation of the brain People born before 1957 are presumed to have immunity because of the amount of measles that was present during that time. People born after that time need to make sure they have been vaccinated with two doses. If you were born between 1957 and 1968, you might not have immunity because the vaccine at the time didn't use a live virus. Vaccine protection does wane over time. You can get a blood test to check your immunity level to be sure. If you have been pregnant in the last 30 years, you have already had your titer check for rubella, which is in the MMR vaccine, and you would have been told if you did not have immunity. Children typically are given the first dose of the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella when they are 12 months old. They receive a second dose between 4 and 6 years old. For vaccinations, contact your primary care provider or go through Austin Public Health or other public health authorities in your county. You can get vaccinated as an adult if you have not been vaccinated previously. In Williamson County, you can look at or call 512- 943-3600 to schedule an appointment. Austin Public Health offers vaccinations for free or reduced rates for children and adults who are uninsured or underinsured, or don't have Medicaid. The typical cost is $13 for children and $25 for adults. You can call (512) 972-5520 to make an appointment at the clinics at 405 W. Stassney Lane in South Austin or 7500 Blessing Avenue in Northeast Austin. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Leander has second measles case
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
US measles cases are undercounted, experts say, but real numbers are proving hard to pin down
During a Cabinet meeting last week, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed what is now the second-worst measles outbreak in the US since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Kennedy has claimed repeatedly that measles cases have 'plateaued,' despite contradictory data from his own federal agencies. On Friday, the health department in Texas – the center of the outbreak that now spans multiple states – reported 232 new cases over the past three weeks, 42% more than in the three weeks before that. New outbreaks have also been reported in Indiana and Ohio. Overall, there have been at least 735 cases in 24 states this year, according to CNN's tally. However, many experts believe that the actual case count stands in the thousands. 'I don't think any of us have full situational awareness of what's going on with this outbreak,' said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. 'You can't say something is flattening if you don't actually know the denominator of cases or [have] an understanding you're getting [the] full capture of the cases.' Some experts think the number of deaths alone indicates that cases are deeply undercounted. The measles fatality rate is typically up to 3 deaths per 1,000 cases. But three deaths have already been reported in the ongoing outbreak in — two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico — even though the official outbreak case count stands at not quite 650 between Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and possibly Kansas. Underreporting could also be happening for a variety of reasons, and that makes it difficult to predict exactly how bad this outbreak will get and how long it will last, said Dr. Nina Masters, a senior research scientist at Truveta, a health-care data and analytics company, and a former epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Better data would be helpful, Masters said, to help public health officials set expectations about how big an outbreak might get, to help public health departments figure out where to allocate resources and to better understand what might be affecting cases. The outbreak has mainly infected people who were not vaccinated or whose vaccine status is unknown. If a local agency knows who is unvaccinated, it could do more targeted outreach to help persuade them to get protected against the virus. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine works rapidly and has been shown to provide the best protection against measles, particularly when it's given to people in affected areas quickly. During a measles outbreak at a migrant shelter in Chicago last year, Masters – then with the CDC – created a model to predict the size of the outbreak and another to determine what effect interventions would have. 'In both of those models, the results were very non-subtle that mass vaccination is really the way to bring these outbreaks under control, and the days matter. If you delay by a week, that increases the size of the outbreak,' she said. Without mass vaccinations in the affected community in Chicago, the model predicted, there would be 250 cases. But because vaccines were administered quickly, there were only 57. In 2019, Dr. Mark S. Roberts was part of an effort to create a model that took into account Texas' expected number of unvaccinated to predict what a measles outbreak there would look like. Until recently, the prediction was eerily similar to the case count in the current outbreak, said Roberts, a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. Now, though, cases in some counties have even outpaced the prediction. Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak, had 355 cases as of April 11, and the state health department says that number is expected to continue to rise. If there had been an outbreak in Gaines County in 2018, Roberts' model predicted 270 cases, 100 of whom would be 'bystanders' — not children whose parents refused vaccination but those who couldn't get vaccinated or for whom the vaccine hadn't fully worked. Roberts and many other public health experts are frustrated by the deaths that have already taken place. 'It's freaking 2025, and a child has died of measles,' Roberts said. 'It's just not right. This is a disease that, 12 years ago, we basically had eradicated.' Models are helpful in an outbreak, but even with all the data in the world, Roberts knows, not everyone is going to listen to the message that the unvaccinated need protection. In 2019, he presented his model to the Texas Legislature. Lawmakers asked good questions and understood what he showed them, he said, but not a single law was passed to improve vaccination rates in Texas. 'The thing that's really sad about this is that all of this was predictable and totally avoidable,' Roberts said. 'It's just really sad.' Cases may be undercounted in the ongoing outbreak, Masters said, because people aren't getting tested or because they may be staying away from hospitals. In the Mennonite community that has been the center of the outbreak in Texas, there is a great sense of self-reliance and a preference for home remedies over doctors. 'I think it's a little difficult to tease apart which element of the underreporting Is leaning in which direction,' Masters said. Another reason it's been hard to get an accurate case count is because of massive federal funding cuts for public health. The CDC pulled back over $11 billion in grants allocated during the Covid-19 pandemic that state and local health departments had been using to respond to a variety of public health threats, including measles. In New Mexico, where at least 58 cases have been reported, a pullback of federal funds meant the public health department had to terminate contracts for 20 temporary workers who were helping with the measles response by checking vaccination records. Dr. Phil Huang, Health and Human Services director in Dallas County, Texas, said that in addition to canceling dozens of vaccine clinics in school districts with low vaccination rates, he had to lay off 11 permanent staff and 10 temporary workers, including three who work in the labs used to detect measles. 'Those are our numbers so far,' he said. 'We are looking at perhaps a few further cuts in the near future.' These cuts mean real numbers may become even more difficult to pin down. Measles, a highly contagious virus, behaves in an entirely predictable fashion, Masters said. 'It behaves almost the same way in almost every setting,' she said. 'If someone has measles, they go into a room with a bunch of people who are susceptible to measles, a lot of those people are going to get sick.' Kennedy said last week that the US is a 'model for the rest of the world' when it comes to managing measles, but the country is no longer as effective at preventing outbreaks because of decreasing vaccination rates. 'Saying we're better or no worse off than other countries, that's misleading at best and kind of a whitewash of the significance of this measles outbreak,' said Dr. Bill Moss, a professor in epidemiology and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 'It is true that, historically, the United States has done better than many other countries in the world,' he said. 'That's because we've had a strong immunization program.' Measles had been declared eliminated in the US in 2000 because the majority of people were vaccinated, but that number has been falling since the Covid-19 pandemic – even before a lawyer with a history of vaccine skepticism took over HHS. In 2024, just 68.5% of kids in the US had their first dose of the MMR vaccine by 15 months of age, according to a new report from Truveta. This is a significant decline from 2020, when more than 77% of kids got their first shot by this age. And it's far short of the federal goal of 95% of children in kindergarten having had their second dose, the threshold needed to prevent measles outbreaks. Coverage of the MMR vaccine is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year had not gotten the shot. Some other counties in the affected states also fall below the 95% benchmark, according to CDC data. In Kansas, for example, only 90% of kindergartners have gotten their MMR vaccines. The Sublette Unified School District in the southwestern part of the state, where most of the state's cases are concentrated, has a vaccination rate of just 44%, according to data from the state health department. Working on Truveta's report 'set off real alarm bells for me,' Masters said. Current measles vaccination rates mean the country is no longer closing immunity gaps like it used to, 'which is very concerning for the future of this outbreak,' she said. Kennedy has said that people should get the MMR vaccine, but he has also said that doing so should be a personal choice. With so much hesitancy in areas that have seen so many cases, experts say that here needs to be a clearer message from the top and that, as with a 2019 measles outbreak, many more people will need to be convinced that getting a vaccine is not just in their best interest, it is also in the best interest of the community. 'It's important for people to know, not vaccinating your child doesn't only put your child at risk, it puts other children at risk,' Roberts said. CNN's Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.
CNN
15-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
US measles cases are undercounted, experts say, but real numbers are proving hard to pin down
During a Cabinet meeting last week, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed what is now the second-worst measles outbreak in the US since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Kennedy has claimed repeatedly that measles cases have 'plateaued,' despite contradictory data from his own federal agencies. On Friday, the health department in Texas – the center of the outbreak that now spans multiple states – reported 232 new cases over the past three weeks, 42% more than in the three weeks before that. New outbreaks have also been reported in Indiana and Ohio. Overall, there have been at least 735 cases in 24 states this year, according to CNN's tally. However, many experts believe that the actual case count stands in the thousands. 'I don't think any of us have full situational awareness of what's going on with this outbreak,' said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. 'You can't say something is flattening if you don't actually know the denominator of cases or [have] an understanding you're getting [the] full capture of the cases.' Some experts think the number of deaths alone indicates that cases are deeply undercounted. The measles fatality rate is typically up to 3 deaths per 1,000 cases. But three deaths have already been reported in the ongoing outbreak in — two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico — even though the official outbreak case count stands at not quite 650 between Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and possibly Kansas. Underreporting could also be happening for a variety of reasons, and that makes it difficult to predict exactly how bad this outbreak will get and how long it will last, said Dr. Nina Masters, a senior research scientist at Truveta, a health-care data and analytics company, and a former epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Better data would be helpful, Masters said, to help public health officials set expectations about how big an outbreak might get, to help public health departments figure out where to allocate resources and to better understand what might be affecting cases. The outbreak has mainly infected people who were not vaccinated or whose vaccine status is unknown. If a local agency knows who is unvaccinated, it could do more targeted outreach to help persuade them to get protected against the virus. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine works rapidly and has been shown to provide the best protection against measles, particularly when it's given to people in affected areas quickly. During a measles outbreak at a migrant shelter in Chicago last year, Masters – then with the CDC – created a model to predict the size of the outbreak and another to determine what effect interventions would have. 'In both of those models, the results were very non-subtle that mass vaccination is really the way to bring these outbreaks under control, and the days matter. If you delay by a week, that increases the size of the outbreak,' she said. Without mass vaccinations in the affected community in Chicago, the model predicted, there would be 250 cases. But because vaccines were administered quickly, there were only 57. In 2019, Dr. Mark S. Roberts was part of an effort to create a model that took into account Texas' expected number of unvaccinated to predict what a measles outbreak there would look like. Until recently, the prediction was eerily similar to the case count in the current outbreak, said Roberts, a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. Now, though, cases in some counties have even outpaced the prediction. Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak, had 355 cases as of April 11, and the state health department says that number is expected to continue to rise. If there had been an outbreak in Gaines County in 2018, Roberts' model predicted 270 cases, 100 of whom would be 'bystanders' — not children whose parents refused vaccination but those who couldn't get vaccinated or for whom the vaccine hadn't fully worked. Roberts and many other public health experts are frustrated by the deaths that have already taken place. 'It's freaking 2025, and a child has died of measles,' Roberts said. 'It's just not right. This is a disease that, 12 years ago, we basically had eradicated.' Models are helpful in an outbreak, but even with all the data in the world, Roberts knows, not everyone is going to listen to the message that the unvaccinated need protection. In 2019, he presented his model to the Texas Legislature. Lawmakers asked good questions and understood what he showed them, he said, but not a single law was passed to improve vaccination rates in Texas. 'The thing that's really sad about this is that all of this was predictable and totally avoidable,' Roberts said. 'It's just really sad.' Cases may be undercounted in the ongoing outbreak, Masters said, because people aren't getting tested or because they may be staying away from hospitals. In the Mennonite community that has been the center of the outbreak in Texas, there is a great sense of self-reliance and a preference for home remedies over doctors. 'I think it's a little difficult to tease apart which element of the underreporting Is leaning in which direction,' Masters said. Another reason it's been hard to get an accurate case count is because of massive federal funding cuts for public health. The CDC pulled back over $11 billion in grants allocated during the Covid-19 pandemic that state and local health departments had been using to respond to a variety of public health threats, including measles. In New Mexico, where at least 58 cases have been reported, a pullback of federal funds meant the public health department had to terminate contracts for 20 temporary workers who were helping with the measles response by checking vaccination records. Dr. Phil Huang, Health and Human Services director in Dallas County, Texas, said that in addition to canceling dozens of vaccine clinics in school districts with low vaccination rates, he had to lay off 11 permanent staff and 10 temporary workers, including three who work in the labs used to detect measles. 'Those are our numbers so far,' he said. 'We are looking at perhaps a few further cuts in the near future.' These cuts mean real numbers may become even more difficult to pin down. Measles, a highly contagious virus, behaves in an entirely predictable fashion, Masters said. 'It behaves almost the same way in almost every setting,' she said. 'If someone has measles, they go into a room with a bunch of people who are susceptible to measles, a lot of those people are going to get sick.' Kennedy said last week that the US is a 'model for the rest of the world' when it comes to managing measles, but the country is no longer as effective at preventing outbreaks because of decreasing vaccination rates. 'Saying we're better or no worse off than other countries, that's misleading at best and kind of a whitewash of the significance of this measles outbreak,' said Dr. Bill Moss, a professor in epidemiology and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 'It is true that, historically, the United States has done better than many other countries in the world,' he said. 'That's because we've had a strong immunization program.' Measles had been declared eliminated in the US in 2000 because the majority of people were vaccinated, but that number has been falling since the Covid-19 pandemic – even before a lawyer with a history of vaccine skepticism took over HHS. In 2024, just 68.5% of kids in the US had their first dose of the MMR vaccine by 15 months of age, according to a new report from Truveta. This is a significant decline from 2020, when more than 77% of kids got their first shot by this age. And it's far short of the federal goal of 95% of children in kindergarten having had their second dose, the threshold needed to prevent measles outbreaks. Coverage of the MMR vaccine is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year had not gotten the shot. Some other counties in the affected states also fall below the 95% benchmark, according to CDC data. In Kansas, for example, only 90% of kindergartners have gotten their MMR vaccines. The Sublette Unified School District in the southwestern part of the state, where most of the state's cases are concentrated, has a vaccination rate of just 44%, according to data from the state health department. Working on Truveta's report 'set off real alarm bells for me,' Masters said. Current measles vaccination rates mean the country is no longer closing immunity gaps like it used to, 'which is very concerning for the future of this outbreak,' she said. Kennedy has said that people should get the MMR vaccine, but he has also said that doing so should be a personal choice. With so much hesitancy in areas that have seen so many cases, experts say that here needs to be a clearer message from the top and that, as with a 2019 measles outbreak, many more people will need to be convinced that getting a vaccine is not just in their best interest, it is also in the best interest of the community. 'It's important for people to know, not vaccinating your child doesn't only put your child at risk, it puts other children at risk,' Roberts said. CNN's Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.
CNN
15-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
US measles cases are undercounted, experts say, but real numbers are proving hard to pin down
During a Cabinet meeting last week, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed what is now the second-worst measles outbreak in the US since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Kennedy has claimed repeatedly that measles cases have 'plateaued,' despite contradictory data from his own federal agencies. On Friday, the health department in Texas – the center of the outbreak that now spans multiple states – reported 232 new cases over the past three weeks, 42% more than in the three weeks before that. New outbreaks have also been reported in Indiana and Ohio. Overall, there have been at least 735 cases in 24 states this year, according to CNN's tally. However, many experts believe that the actual case count stands in the thousands. 'I don't think any of us have full situational awareness of what's going on with this outbreak,' said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. 'You can't say something is flattening if you don't actually know the denominator of cases or [have] an understanding you're getting [the] full capture of the cases.' Some experts think the number of deaths alone indicates that cases are deeply undercounted. The measles fatality rate is typically up to 3 deaths per 1,000 cases. But three deaths have already been reported in the ongoing outbreak in — two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico — even though the official outbreak case count stands at not quite 650 between Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and possibly Kansas. Underreporting could also be happening for a variety of reasons, and that makes it difficult to predict exactly how bad this outbreak will get and how long it will last, said Dr. Nina Masters, a senior research scientist at Truveta, a health-care data and analytics company, and a former epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Better data would be helpful, Masters said, to help public health officials set expectations about how big an outbreak might get, to help public health departments figure out where to allocate resources and to better understand what might be affecting cases. The outbreak has mainly infected people who were not vaccinated or whose vaccine status is unknown. If a local agency knows who is unvaccinated, it could do more targeted outreach to help persuade them to get protected against the virus. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine works rapidly and has been shown to provide the best protection against measles, particularly when it's given to people in affected areas quickly. During a measles outbreak at a migrant shelter in Chicago last year, Masters – then with the CDC – created a model to predict the size of the outbreak and another to determine what effect interventions would have. 'In both of those models, the results were very non-subtle that mass vaccination is really the way to bring these outbreaks under control, and the days matter. If you delay by a week, that increases the size of the outbreak,' she said. Without mass vaccinations in the affected community in Chicago, the model predicted, there would be 250 cases. But because vaccines were administered quickly, there were only 57. In 2019, Dr. Mark S. Roberts was part of an effort to create a model that took into account Texas' expected number of unvaccinated to predict what a measles outbreak there would look like. Until recently, the prediction was eerily similar to the case count in the current outbreak, said Roberts, a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. Now, though, cases in some counties have even outpaced the prediction. Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak, had 355 cases as of April 11, and the state health department says that number is expected to continue to rise. If there had been an outbreak in Gaines County in 2018, Roberts' model predicted 270 cases, 100 of whom would be 'bystanders' — not children whose parents refused vaccination but those who couldn't get vaccinated or for whom the vaccine hadn't fully worked. Roberts and many other public health experts are frustrated by the deaths that have already taken place. 'It's freaking 2025, and a child has died of measles,' Roberts said. 'It's just not right. This is a disease that, 12 years ago, we basically had eradicated.' Models are helpful in an outbreak, but even with all the data in the world, Roberts knows, not everyone is going to listen to the message that the unvaccinated need protection. In 2019, he presented his model to the Texas Legislature. Lawmakers asked good questions and understood what he showed them, he said, but not a single law was passed to improve vaccination rates in Texas. 'The thing that's really sad about this is that all of this was predictable and totally avoidable,' Roberts said. 'It's just really sad.' Cases may be undercounted in the ongoing outbreak, Masters said, because people aren't getting tested or because they may be staying away from hospitals. In the Mennonite community that has been the center of the outbreak in Texas, there is a great sense of self-reliance and a preference for home remedies over doctors. 'I think it's a little difficult to tease apart which element of the underreporting Is leaning in which direction,' Masters said. Another reason it's been hard to get an accurate case count is because of massive federal funding cuts for public health. The CDC pulled back over $11 billion in grants allocated during the Covid-19 pandemic that state and local health departments had been using to respond to a variety of public health threats, including measles. In New Mexico, where at least 58 cases have been reported, a pullback of federal funds meant the public health department had to terminate contracts for 20 temporary workers who were helping with the measles response by checking vaccination records. Dr. Phil Huang, Health and Human Services director in Dallas County, Texas, said that in addition to canceling dozens of vaccine clinics in school districts with low vaccination rates, he had to lay off 11 permanent staff and 10 temporary workers, including three who work in the labs used to detect measles. 'Those are our numbers so far,' he said. 'We are looking at perhaps a few further cuts in the near future.' These cuts mean real numbers may become even more difficult to pin down. Measles, a highly contagious virus, behaves in an entirely predictable fashion, Masters said. 'It behaves almost the same way in almost every setting,' she said. 'If someone has measles, they go into a room with a bunch of people who are susceptible to measles, a lot of those people are going to get sick.' Kennedy said last week that the US is a 'model for the rest of the world' when it comes to managing measles, but the country is no longer as effective at preventing outbreaks because of decreasing vaccination rates. 'Saying we're better or no worse off than other countries, that's misleading at best and kind of a whitewash of the significance of this measles outbreak,' said Dr. Bill Moss, a professor in epidemiology and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 'It is true that, historically, the United States has done better than many other countries in the world,' he said. 'That's because we've had a strong immunization program.' Measles had been declared eliminated in the US in 2000 because the majority of people were vaccinated, but that number has been falling since the Covid-19 pandemic – even before a lawyer with a history of vaccine skepticism took over HHS. In 2024, just 68.5% of kids in the US had their first dose of the MMR vaccine by 15 months of age, according to a new report from Truveta. This is a significant decline from 2020, when more than 77% of kids got their first shot by this age. And it's far short of the federal goal of 95% of children in kindergarten having had their second dose, the threshold needed to prevent measles outbreaks. Coverage of the MMR vaccine is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year had not gotten the shot. Some other counties in the affected states also fall below the 95% benchmark, according to CDC data. In Kansas, for example, only 90% of kindergartners have gotten their MMR vaccines. The Sublette Unified School District in the southwestern part of the state, where most of the state's cases are concentrated, has a vaccination rate of just 44%, according to data from the state health department. Working on Truveta's report 'set off real alarm bells for me,' Masters said. Current measles vaccination rates mean the country is no longer closing immunity gaps like it used to, 'which is very concerning for the future of this outbreak,' she said. Kennedy has said that people should get the MMR vaccine, but he has also said that doing so should be a personal choice. With so much hesitancy in areas that have seen so many cases, experts say that here needs to be a clearer message from the top and that, as with a 2019 measles outbreak, many more people will need to be convinced that getting a vaccine is not just in their best interest, it is also in the best interest of the community. 'It's important for people to know, not vaccinating your child doesn't only put your child at risk, it puts other children at risk,' Roberts said. CNN's Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Texas measles outbreak hits 500 cases, but expert says it could be 4 times higher
The measles outbreak in Texas is likely four times the size of the reported numbers because of a lack of availability of testing and the lack of willingness to come forward to get tested, Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in a news briefing Tuesday. His estimate is based on the number of measles deaths compared with the number of cases reported. Two children have died, and 57 patients have been hospitalized, mainly because of high fever and breathing problems. "Two deaths would tell you it should be 2,000 cases in Texas," Adalja said. It probably means that this is a much bigger outbreak than we've seen in the past, he said. Texas State Health and Human Services is now reporting 505 cases in West Texas, and that includes a growing number of cases in urban areas, including Lubbock. Gaines County, which is the origin of this outbreak in a Mennonite community, still has the most cases. Of the 505 West Texas cases, 495 were in people who were unvaccinated or their vaccination status is not known. "What happened in Gaines County is really a lesson for the whole country," Adalja said. Second child dies of measles in West Texas outbreak Adalja expects the cases to continue to grow. "This is going to take maybe a year to contain," he said. Now with more cases in the Lubbock area, a faster spread is also possible, said Katherine Wells, director of Public Health for the city. Previously, Lubbock was helping to support the people in rural West Texas who were needing to be hospitalized. "Now we're actually seeing transmission within our community," she said of the 36 Lubbock County cases. "Now I'm worried about exposures in grocery stores and malls and those types of places that don't exist as much out in rural communities. ... One case can be exposing more individuals." Measles is one of the most contagious diseases. It spreads by airborne particles, and has a 90% infection rate among unvaccinated people if they are exposed to a person with measles. The virus can live on the surfaces of a room for two hours after the exposure. Lloyd Doggett demands answers from CDC: 'What are you doing about Texas measles outbreak?' There have been six cases in areas outside West Texas, including one in Travis County of an infant. That case has now resolved without any further infections. Texas has expanded the number of counties in the outbreak zone to 21 and changed the vaccine recommendations for that area, Wells said. All children in that area can now get vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine beginning at 6 months old instead of at one year, and children ages 1 to 4 can get a second vaccine before they turn 4. The Lubbock area now has a day care facility with six to seven confirmed measles cases, Wells said, but more children from that day care are waiting to be tested. Any child who is not vaccinated at that center has been sent home for at least 21 days. Kids who have any of the early symptoms such as goopy eyes and runny nose are being sent home, she said. If they have measles, they cannot return until four days after the rash appears and they are symptom- and fever-free. Funding to fight measles outbreak in Texas hit by DOGE cuts Measles is now in 22 states and is actually six separate outbreaks, Adalja said. The Texas outbreak, which has expanded to New Mexico and Oklahoma, makes up the majority of the cases. After federal cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, public health departments have lost personnel on the ground to do the vaccination clinics and the epidemiologists to do contract tracing and control the spread, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services. Near Dallas, a person with measles recently traveled to Grapevine and the Great Wolf Lodge water park hotel, which is causing that area concern. Earlier San Marcos, New Braunfels and San Antonio were concerned about a person who later became positive with measles who had visited that area over Valentine's weekend, but no additional cases are known to have come from that. Most years, 100,000 deaths happen globally from measles, Adalja said, but not in the U.S. What is happening in the U.S. will affect other countries in South America and North America, he said. "It's not just the U.S. on the line here," he said. "It's the whole region of the Americas." That region had received elimination status for measles, but that might be lost, he said. Measles also has long-term consequences. "Measles is not just an acute illness," Adalja said. It causes "immune amnesia," which means people lose their immune protection to other diseases. They also can develop swelling of the brain and other complications years later. RFK Jr.: MMR vaccine 'most effective way' to prevent measles after 2nd Texas child dies After seven to 14 days of being exposed, measles starts with: Cough Runny nose Conjunctivitis Usually a fever of 103 to 104 Four days later: A rash starting at the head and working its way down the body appears. The rash can start as sore spots in the mouth. In severe cases: Inflammation of the lungs Pneumonia from a secondary infection Inflammation of the brain People born before 1957 are presumed to have immunity because of the amount of measles that was present during that time. People born after that time need to make sure they have been vaccinated with two doses. If you were born between 1957 and 1968, you might not have immunity because the vaccine at the time didn't use a live virus. Vaccine protection does wane over time. You can get a blood test to check your immunity level to be sure. If you have been pregnant in the last 30 years, you have already had your titer check for rubella, which is in the MMR vaccine and would have been told if you did not have immunity. For vaccinations, contact your primary care provider or you can go through Austin Public Health. You can get vaccinated as an adult if you have not been vaccinated previously. Austin Public Health offers vaccinations for free or at reduced rates for children and adults who do not have insurance, have Medicaid or are underinsured. The typical cost is $13 for children and $25 for adults. You can make an appointment at 512-972-5520 for the clinics at 405 W. Stassney Lane in South Austin or 7500 Blessing Avenue in Northeast Austin. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas measles cases hit 500, but expert says it could be 4 times that
