Photo: Julio Cortez/AP Photo
Texas officials announced Wednesday that a child has died after contracting the measles, the first fatality in an ongoing, serious outbreak in the state and neighboring New Mexico over the past few weeks.
This marks the first death from measles in the United States since 2015, when a woman in Washington state died after likely contracting the virus at a medical facility during an outbreak. Prior to that, the last measles-related death of a child was in 2003, per a report from the Centers of Disease Control.
Also on Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has a history of vaccine skepticism, said during a Cabinet meeting that his department has been following the outbreak. But Kennedy claimed that there had been two deaths from the spate of the cases, even though there has been no public confirmation of an additional death.
And despite the notable fact that anyone has died of measles at all, the HHS secretary also appeared to downplay the outbreak, noting that they aren’t uncommon in the U.S. “There’ve been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year, there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year,” he said. The CDC confirms that there were 16 measles outbreaks in 2024, categorized as an instance of three or more related cases, compared to three so far this year. But last year’s figures marked a significant rise from four reported outbreaks in 2023, after a quiescent post-pandemic period. And outbreaks have clearly become more common over the last 15 years amid surging vaccine skepticism.
In a press release, the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed that the child who died was hospitalized in the town of Lubbock last week and had tested positive for the measles. The agency did not identify the child, but said they were school aged and not vaccinated for the disease.
Texas first reported an outbreak of the measles in the state’s South Plains region earlier this month. Since late January, the DSHS has identified 124 cases with most of the cases occurring among children and teenagers. Per the agency, 18 people have been hospitalized in connection with the ongoing outbreak. By comparison, there were 285 confirmed cases of measles in the United States in 2024, according to CDC statistics.
The outbreak appeared to originate in Gaines County, a rural region of Texas that has the bulk of the identified cases. According to the Texas Tribune, the state’s vaccination rates have decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic while requests for religious exemptions from vaccines rose significantly from 45,900 in 2018 to 93,000 in 2024.
