A morbillo outbreak that spread on a western Texas band, killing a child, shows no signs of slowing down, according to the data released on Tuesday by state health officials.
The Texas Health Department has reported that since the end of January, almost 160 people have contracted measles – 20 more cases than Friday – and 22 have been hospitalized.
The centers for the control and prevention of diseases announced Tuesday that he would have sent some of his “detectives of the disease” in Texas, one of the first steps that the new administration has adopted to help manage the epidemic.
The news arrives in the midst of criticisms of federal officials for having underestimated the need for immunizations with the vaccine against the measles-Morto-Rubella, one of the most important tools to appease a outbreak.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, on Sunday has described vaccination as a personal decision.
In a pre -aggravated interview that aired on Fox News Tuesday, he said that the federal government was sending doses of vitamin A to the county of Gaines, in Western Texas, and helping to organize the ambulance races.
HHS previously said that officials also sent doses of the MMR vaccine, but Kennedy did not mention the vaccination.
The doctors had seen “very, excellent results”, said Kennedy, treating cases of measles in Texas with steroid, Budesonide; an antibiotic called clarithromycin; and cod liver oil, which according to him had high levels of vitamin A and vitamin D.
While doctors sometimes administer doses of vitamin A to treat children with cases of serious measles, cod liver oil is “at all” a treatment based on evidence, said dr. Sean O’Leary, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.
Dr. O’Leary added that he never heard of a doctor using the Morbillo supplement.
In the comments that seemed to refer to conventional guarantees against measles, Kennedy said: “We will be honest with the American people for the first time in history on what actually – on all tests and all studies, on what we know, what we don’t know”.
“We will say it, and this will make some people angry who want an ideological approach to public health.”
The size of the current epidemic are not clear. The official number of the case in the epidemic of Texas is most likely an undergrowth, said Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock’s public health, in Texas.
The epidemic has widely spread within a community of mennonites in the county of Gaines, which historically had lower vaccination rates and often avoid interacting with the health system.
Mrs. Wells said she believed that many of those families had not sought medical care for measles and have not been explained in the official numbers of the state.
“I think it’s probably hundreds,” he said. “We know that some of their schools were closed with many sick children, but we don’t know who those children were.”
Last year, about 82 percent of the County kindergarten population had received the measles, peer and rubella vaccine. Experts say that at least 95 percent of people in a community must be vaccinated to avoid outings.
The downhill rates in the United States have left a growing pocket of vulnerable children, making it more likely that a outbreak will skip from one group not vaccinated to the other.
Only 93 percent of kindergarten students at national level had received the measles vaccine, parotte and rosolia in the school year 2023-24, falling 95 percent before the pandemic.
“We have benefited considerably as Americans that these communities have been spaced,” said Michael Mina, previously epidemiologist at Harvard and now Chief Medical Officer of Emed.
“A case in one of them can light cases in all of them, because you are no longer benefiting from this space,” he said.
In Texas, the cases of measles have been confirmed in nine counties, many of which have vaccination rates below federal recommendations.
About 80 % of kindergarten students in one of the districts of public schools in Terry County, which Gaines neighbors have been vaccinated for measles, according to recent state data. That county reported 22 cases of measles on Tuesday.
A county in New Mexico that Borders Gaines County reported nine cases of measles.
While most cases of measles are resolved in a few weeks, in rare cases the virus can cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, in particular children, put oxygen in their lungs or swelling of the brain, which can lead to blindness, deafness and intellectual disability.
About one in five people who will catch the measles will be hospitalized, according to the CDC
The virus also weakens the long -term immune system, making its guest more susceptible to future infections. A 2015 study discovered that before the MMR vaccine was widely available, measles may have been responsible until halfway through all the deaths from infectious diseases in children.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg Contributed relationships.