"The Talk of the Town"
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. has recorded the highest number of measles cases since 2019, according to new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Friday.
There are now 712 confirmed measles cases across 24 states, an increase of 105 cases from the prior week, the CDC said.
There were 1,274 reported cases in all of 2019.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(LUBBOCK, Texas) — An unvaccinated school-aged child in Texas has died of measles, the first associated with an outbreak in the western part of the state that has infected more than 100 people.
Lubbock city spokesperson Lauren Adams confirmed the death to ABC News on Wednesday.
In a press release, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) said the child was hospitalized in the northwestern city of Lubbock last week and tested positive for measles.
As of Wednesday, 124 cases of measles have been confirmed associated with the outbreak, according to data from DSHS.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, and 18 people have been hospitalized so far, DSHS said.
Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases with 62, followed by 39 cases among children ages 4 and under.
The outbreak began in Gaines County, which has become the epicenter, with 80 cases confirmed among residents, according to DSHS.
The outbreak has since spread to several counties in the region and is “suspected” to have spread into New Mexico, according to New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH). Nine cases have been confirmed in Lea County, which borders Texas. Of the nine cases, four are among children, according to NMDOH.
“This death underscores the real danger of measles — it’s a severe disease that can take lives despite being preventable with vaccination,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and ABC News contributor. “Every new case is a reminder of why vaccination is critical. Tragically, with an outbreak of this scale, a fatal case was not unexpected, especially among those unvaccinated. Given how contagious measles is, we anticipate more cases in the coming weeks.”
During Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Health and & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a question about the outbreak, saying the agency was following the cases in Texas.
Kennedy appeared to downplay the outbreak, noting there have been four outbreaks so far this year compared to 16 last year. However, the number of cases in Texas alone amount to nearly half of the 285 cases confirmed in 2024.
“It’s not unusual; we have measles outbreaks every year,” he said.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to humans. Just one infected patient can spread measles up to nine out of 10 susceptible close contacts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Health officials have been urging anyone who isn’t vaccinated to receive the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The CDC currently recommends people receive two vaccine doses, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective. Most vaccinated adults don’t need a booster.
Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, due to the highly effective vaccination program, according to the CDC. However, vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years.
About 93% of kindergarteners nationwide received select routine childhood vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, for the 2022-23 school year, according to a November 2023 CDC report.
This is about the same as the previous school year, but lower than the 94% seen in the 2020-22021 school year and the 95% seen in the 2019-2020 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter percentage had been the standard for about 10 years.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
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(LUBBOCK, TEXAS) — A second child in Texas has died of measles, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
“The school-aged child who tested positive for measles was hospitalized in Lubbock and passed away on Thursday from what the child’s doctors described as measles pulmonary failure,” the statement said, in part. “The child was not vaccinated and had no reported underlying conditions.”
The University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, said the child had been receiving care for “complications of measles while hospitalized” and also emphasized, as the state health department did, that the child was unvaccinated with no underlying conditions.
An unvaccinated school-aged child also died of measles in Texas in late February, according to the Texas Department of Health Services – the first measles death in a decade in the United States. A week later, an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico died with measles, the New Mexico Department of Health reported.
The outbreak has so far led to 642 confirmed cases across 22 states, but the vast majority — 499 cases — have been in Texas, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy posted on X on Sunday afternoon.
Kennedy also said in the post that he visited Texas on Sunday to “comfort” the family of the child. He said he’d developed a close relationship with the impacted community — which has largely been unvaccinated — including the family of the first child to die in the outbreak.
He added that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” is the measles, mumps and rubella — or MMR — vaccine.
The HHS secretary, who has a long history of vaccine skepticism, has come under fire from public health officials for downplaying the measles outbreak and not advocating enough for widespread vaccination.
In Kennedy’s first public comments on the measles outbreak last month, he said that outbreaks were not “uncommon” because they happen every year and declined to specifically encourage vaccination.
Public health experts who criticized Kennedy pointed out that outbreaks do not have to happen every year and are preventable with the MMR vaccine, which is 97% effective with two doses. Kennedy has since repeated that the vaccine is the “most effective way” to prevent measles, though often also noted that it’s a “personal choice.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who publicly wrestled with his support for Kennedy but eventually voted to support him as HHS secretary, said the second death in Texas proved that “top health officials” should be “unequivocally” encouraging the vaccine.
“Everyone should be vaccinated!” Cassidy wrote on X Sunday. “There is no treatment for measles. No benefit to getting measles. Top health officials should say so unequivocally [before] another child dies.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services said on April 4 that Texas is experiencing its worst measles outbreak in 30 years.
There are more than double the number of cases of measles in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year than the entirety of last year, which saw 285 cases nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These are the highest number of measles cases in the U.S. since 2019, which saw 1,274 cases, according to the CDC. New Mexico is experiencing its worst measles outbreak in 40 years, with 54 cases. Kansas and Ohio are also experiencing outbreaks.
If the number of this year’s cases continues to grow at the current rate, the U.S. would likely surpass that 2019 number, which would lead to the highest number of cases in the U.S. since 1992.
The U.S. declared measles eliminated in the year 2000, after finding no continuous spread of the highly contagious disease over 12 months. The country would be at risk of losing that status if an outbreak continued for more than one year. The Texas outbreak saw its first measles cases in January.
The CDC currently recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles.
In his statement on Sunday, Kennedy said a CDC team was deployed to Texas in early March to support state and local health officials and to supply pharmacies and clinics with MMR vaccines.
“I’ve spoken to Governor Abbott, and I’ve offered HHS’ continued support. At his request, we have redeployed CDC teams to Texas. We will continue to follow Texas’ lead and to offer similar resources to other affected jurisdictions,” he said in the post.
Kennedy’ visit to Texas comes shortly after the secretary, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has cut one-fourth of the HHS workforce and one-fifth of those employed by the CDC.
The HHS recently clawed back roughly $11 billion in funding from state and local health departments for COVID recovery efforts, saying the money was no longer needed as the pandemic was over. But health officials said the money was being used to better equip communities’ abilities to deal with the spread of diseases — including measles — and better prepare for the next pandemic.
Dr. Philip Huang, the top health official for the city of Dallas, told ABC News that the cuts to the HHS funding and its workforce could impact efforts to respond to the measles outbreak in his state.
“This definitely impacts our measles response,” he said. “We were looking to build out our lab capacity, some of our ability to get immunizations out into the community and into schools.”
“These smaller health departments, they don’t have many staff. You make a small cut and that takes away a considerable percentage of their workforce and ability to respond to anything at all,” Huang said.
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that the new coronavirus found in bats is currently not a cause for concern.
There is no reason to believe the virus poses a threat to public health at the moment and no infections have been detected in humans, according to the federal health agency.
“CDC is aware of a publication about a new bat coronavirus, but there is no reason to believe it currently poses a concern to public health,” the agency said in a statement. “The publication referenced demonstrates that the bat virus can use a human protein to enter cells in the laboratory, but they have not detected infections in humans.”
Chinese researchers, including from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Guangzhou Medical University, published a paper in the journal Cell on Friday indicating they had discovered a new bat coronavirus that could have the potential to infect humans.
The newer coronavirus is known as HKU5-CoV-2 and is a type of merbecovirus, which is the same family of another coronavirus known to infect humans called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
In a lab study, the new coronavirus was found to have the potential to enter cells through the ACE2 receptor, a protein found on the cells’ surface.
This is the same way the virus that causes COVID-19 infects people, which theoretically means the new coronavirus could pose a risk to spilling over into humans.
The spike protein of the new coronavirus infected human cells that had high levels of the ACE2 receptor in test tubes, as well as in small models of human airways and intestines.
The researchers found that the virus did not enter human cells as readily as the virus that causes COVID-19 — which is called SARS-CoV-2 — writing that the “risk of emergence in human populations should not be exaggerated.”
None of the animal studies that were conducted examined the virus’s ability to cause disease or its transmissibility.
If the virus were to infect humans, the researchers suggested antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies — laboratory-produced proteins that mimic the antibodies the body naturally creates when fighting a virus — could be effective.
There are hundreds of coronaviruses circulating in nature. Only a few can infect humans, causing illnesses ranging from mild respiratory tract infections to more severe conditions such as bronchitis or pneumonia.
Coronaviruses include some variations of the common cold, the virus that causes MERS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the virus that causes COVID-19.
The researchers wrote that “bats harbor the highest proportion of genetically diverse coronaviruses,” posing a risk of spilling over into humans.
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