The measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has reached 208 cases.
Texas officials reported 198 confirmed cases across nine counties as of Friday, with 23 people requiring hospitalization since the outbreak exploded at the end of January. Most of the cases continue to be in children and teens, with 153 of the 198 cases being between the ages of 0 and 17. Eleven cases have no confirmed age listed. All but five cases are in people who are unvaccinated or have no vaccination record.
Texas officials have so far reported one death in the outbreak in an unvaccinated school-aged child with no underlying health conditions. Media reports have identified the child as being a 6-year-old.
On Thursday, health officials in New Mexico reported a second death in a person with measles. The case was in an unvaccinated adult who didn’t seek medical care before dying. The person tested positive for measles only after death and the cause of the person’s death is still under investigation, the state’s health department reported.
Since the outbreak erupted in Texas, New Mexico has reported 10 measles cases, which includes the deceased adult. All of the cases—four children and six adults—are in Lea County, which sits directly across the border from Gaines County, Texas, the undervaccinated epicenter of the outbreak. It’s widely assumed that—given the timing and proximity—the New Mexico cases are linked to the Texas outbreak and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering them part of the same outbreak. But no clear connection between confirmed cases has yet been identified. That lack of a known link only makes the situation grimmer, because it hints at undetected community spread and cases that may be going unreported.
Officials in New Mexico are calling for vaccination to prevent their own case count from ballooning. “We don’t want to see New Mexicans getting sick or dying from measles,” Chad Smelser, deputy state epidemiologist for the New Mexico health department said in a press release. “The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is the best protection against this serious disease.”
Texas officials, too, have been giving full-throated endorsements of vaccination amid the outbreak. “The best way to prevent measles is to be vaccinated with two doses of a measles-containing vaccine,” the Texas health department said on its webpage about the extremely infectious disease (emphasis by the health department).
The message is in contrast to the equivocal and worrisome responses from the new US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a long-time anti-vaccine advocate. Kennedy initially downplayed the outbreak, calling it “not unusual,” before penning an op-ed for Fox News, in which he failed to outright recommend vaccination and instead emphasized parental choice and endorsed “good nutrition” and supplements.
Moving backward
The response has only bolstered a dangerous trend among some parents to embrace vitamin A and cod liver oil, which is rich in vitamin A, to prevent or treat measles—a trend doctors’ groups have been quick to try to combat. The idea of turning to vitamin A is not completely unfounded: Two vitamin A doses within 24 hours is a recommended treatment for children with measles, particularly those hospitalized. But, vitamin A does not in any way prevent measles. Moreover, it can easily be dangerous. Doses need to be carefully administered by a doctor to avoid toxic overdoses.
Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin that stays in the body. Taking too much over longer periods can cause vomiting, headache, fatigue, joint and bone pain, blurry vision, and skin and hair problems. Further, it can lead to dangerously high pressure inside the skull that pushes on the brain, as well as liver damage, confusion, coma, and other problems, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Nevertheless, in an interview with Fox News this week, Kennedy endorsed an unconventional regimen of a steroid, an antibiotic and cod liver oil, praising two Texas doctors for giving it to patients. One of the doctors Kennedy championed was disciplined by the state medical board in 2003 for “unusual use of risk-filled medications,” according to a report by CNN.
In a yet more worrying sign, Reuters reported Friday afternoon that the CDC is planning to conduct a large study on whether the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. This taxpayer-funded effort would occur despite the fact that decades of research and numerous high-quality studies have already been conducted—and they have consistently disproven or found no connection between the vaccine and autism.
The agency’s move is exactly what Democratic senators feared when Kennedy was confirmed as the country’s top health official. In Senate hearings, Kennedy refused to say that vaccines do not cause autism. Democratic senators quickly warned that his anti-vaccine stance could not only move the country backward in the fight against vaccine-preventable diseases, but also hold back autism research aimed at finding the real cause(s) as well as better treatments.
“When you continue to sow doubt about settled science it makes it impossible for us to move forward,” Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a Senate hearing. “It’s the relitigating and rehashing … it freezes us in place.”