LUBOCC, Texas (AP) – An unvaccinated child died of measles in western Texas.
The death was a “unvaccinated school-age child” and was hospitalized last week, the Texas Department of Health said in a statement Wednesday.
Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Melissa Whitfield, a spokesman for the Center for Health Sciences at Texas Institute of Technology, first confirmed the overnight death on Wednesday morning.
Measles outbreaks in rural areas of western Texas have grown to 124 cases in nine counties. This is Texas’ biggest in nearly 30 years, state health officials say. There are nine cases in eastern New Mexico.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed that this is the country’s first measles death since 2015. The measles incident was the worst in almost 30 years of 2019, with cases rising in 2024, including the Chicago outbreak. Over 60.
The outbreak is largely spread in the Mennonite community in west Texas. There, small towns are separated by vast oil-equipped open lands, but connected for people moving between jobs, churches, grocery shopping and other towns. business.
Data from the Texas Department of Health shows that the majority of cases are among people under the age of 18. Gaines County has 80 cases, but Texas has one of the highest fees for school-age children opting out of at least one necessary vaccine. 14% of kindergarten to high school students in the 2023-24 grade.
Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to 2 hours. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nine out of ten susceptible people will be ingested when exposed. Most children recover from measles when they acquire measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, swelling of the brain, and death.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control “provides technical assistance, lab support and vaccines” to West Texas, the agency told the Associated Press, but the state health department is taking the lead in the outbreak investigation.
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This story was revised to show that Melissa Whitfield, who owns the Texas Institute of Technology’s Health Sciences Center, provided death confirmations rather than a spokesman for the city of Lubbock.
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The Associated Press School of Health Sciences is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institution’s Science and Education Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.
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