Measles outbreak in west Texas could spread quickly, CDC alerts
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a warning about the rapid expansion of a measles outbreak in west Texas.
Two people have died, including a child, and at least 208 people have been sickened across west Texas and New Mexico after an outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease took hold in rural Gaines county, News.Az reports, citing the Guardian.
“It is worrisome,” said Dr Ron Cook, a family medicine specialist in Lubbock who serves as the county’s health authority. “Lubbock is the largest medical center, shopping center, etcetera between Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Dallas-Fort Worth”, and a place many from west Texas visit.
Residents of west Texas “come here to shop at the big box stores – Walmart, Costco, Sam’s and so forth,” said Cook, adding that Lubbock hospitals have already treated 38 measles patients from the outbreak.
The deaths are the first from measles in nearly a decade – and come as a test for the Trump administration’s new health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime critic of vaccines.
Cook described an outbreak curve, familiar to those who watched infections rise and fall during the Covid-19 pandemic, that is still on the “incline”.
Cook described an outbreak curve, familiar to those who watched infections rise and fall during the Covid-19 pandemic, that is still on the “incline”.
Cook said people also travel for maternity and pediatric care. He worries that the immunocompromised and babies could be exposed to measles in doctor’s waiting rooms.
“I personally don’t think I anticipated this, although I’m not surprised,” said Dr Tammy Camp, pediatric residency coordinator with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, also in Lubbock. When fewer people vaccinate, she said, “you always know you’re ripe for the possibility of an outbreak”.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine. Doctors often use the example of a room full of people to illustrate this: if 10 unvaccinated individuals enter and one has measles, nine leave infected.
The CDC expects the outbreak to continue spreading and potentially worsen with the upcoming spring and summer travel season. Although measles was once a common childhood disease, it is not without risks and general misery.
The most common symptoms include a characteristic top-down rash, fever, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Severe symptoms are less common but can be devastating: about one in a thousand infected children suffer severe brain swelling, called encephalitis, a condition that can lead to seizures, deafness and intellectual disability. Between one and three out of a thousand will die.
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