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American health officials confirmed that at least one person, a child, has died from measles amid an outbreak in the state of Texas, marking the country’s first death from the disease in a decade.
The child had not been vaccinated against the disease; so far, more than 120 people have been infected in the outbreak, almost all of whom are children.
At a Cabinet meeting at the White House Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said two people had died in the Texas outbreak and that the department was monitoring the situation. Kennedy stressed that there have been four measles outbreaks in the US this year, which he described as “not unusual.”
Measles was officially eliminated from the US in 2000 — meaning the absence of continuous spread for more than a year — a public health achievement made possible by widespread vaccine uptake.
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Vaccine coverage is sliding in the US: During the last school year, 92.7% of kindergartners were up to date on their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines, down from 95.2% in 2019-20, The Wall Street Journal noted. In the Texas county at the outbreak’s center, some 17.6% of kindergartners had exemptions.
As health secretary, the Journal’s conservative editorial board wrote, Kennedy risks “spreading doubt and confusion” over vaccines, potentially exacerbating the decline in uptake: A noted vaccine skeptic, Kennedy has long sought to link vaccines to autism, something scientists have repeatedly debunked, and questioned the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.