A child who was hospitalized with measles has died from the illness in West Texas, state and local health officials announced Wednesday. It is the first death in a measles outbreak that has infected more than 120 people since late last month.
Lubbock health officials and the Department of State Health Services said the patient was an unvaccinated school-aged child who died in the last 24 hours.
Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, has seen “about 20 patients” admitted with confirmed measles cases, and several have needed intensive care, Dr. Lara Johnson, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said Wednesday at a news conference. None of the hospitalized patients had been vaccinated, Johnson said.
As of Wednesday, the Texas health department had confirmed at least 18 hospitalizations amid the outbreak, which is primarily affecting children and teenagers. Johnson said there have been some confirmed cases in adults, but none requiring hospitalization as of Wednesday. North Texas reported its first confirmed case of measles Wednesday. Nearly all of those who have been reported ill in Texas were unvaccinated. Nine cases have been reported in neighboring New Mexico.
As many as 1 in 20 children with measles will develop pneumonia, CDC data shows.In some cases, measles can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness or death.
While most people’s symptoms improve, about 1 in 5 unvaccinated people will be hospitalized, 1 out of every 1,000 will develop brain swelling that can lead to brain damage, and up to 3 of every 1,000 will die.
“Measles is a deadly virus,” Johnson said. “…The predominant issues that we talk about and that have led patients to be admitted to the hospital are those respiratory issues, and so that is a frequent cause of death. There are also neurological issues that can happen acutely, encephalitis, swelling of the brain, blindness, other issues along that line that can also be a part of acute measles.”
There could also be a fatal neurological complication that occurs years after infection, Johnson said.
“There are lots of childhood rashes and fevers, and as parents, we all know that our kids get these here and there. This is not that. This is a much more serious illness that has much greater risk of serious complications,” Johnson said.
Johnson also contradicted comments from newly sworn-in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claimed earlier Wednesday that the majority of the hospitalized cases were for quarantine purposes.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” Johnson said. “…That quarantine is not something that would happen in a health care facility. We admit patients who need acute, supportive treatment in our hospital.”
Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, but doctors and health officials say the vaccine, which is normally given as part of the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, is highly safe and effective.
“Measles is an incredibly contagious virus … and spreads really easily among those who are susceptible or who aren’t immune,” Johnson said. “So, we know, if you’re in a room with someone with active contagious measles, you have about a 90% chance of contracting that illness if you are not immune.”
Johnson noted measles is an airborne virus.
“The best way to contain a measles outbreak is through vaccination,” Johnson said. “We’re very lucky to have an extremely effective vaccine for measles. Having two doses of a measles vaccine confers 97% lifetime immunity.”
She said the risk to those who have been vaccinated is “extremely, extremely low…The risk with measles is really for those who are not immune, who have not been vaccinated. And in that population, as I said, it spreads very quickly.”
For children too young to get the measles vaccine, Johnson said parents should continue taking the usual precautions — like avoiding interactions with large crowds — they would this time of year, as it still remains cold, RSV and flu season.
Johnson also said in some cases, infants who are typically considered too young for the vaccine could still receive it, especially if they had a known exposure to the virus, in which case even a 7- or 8-month-old would ideally be immunized within 72 hours of the exposure.
Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, said recently on “CBS Mornings” that even a slight dip in vaccination coverage can lead to outbreaks.
“This is a measles outbreak that began in a very close-knit, rural, Mennonite community that has very low vaccination rates. And unfortunately, we have seen vaccination rates exemptions … really soar in Texas in recent years,” she said.
According to recent KFF polling, about 17% of parents say they have skipped or delayed a vaccine dose for their children.
“This is up from about 10% just two years ago. So we’re really seeing a lot of exemptions [and] concerns about vaccination that are not warranted,” Gounder said.
Before a vaccine became available in the 1960s, between 400 and 500 Americans — mostly children — died every year from measles.
“When I graduated from medical school [in 2002], I was confident I would never see a measles outbreak unless I chose to work internationally, because at that time, we were confident we’d eradicated measles from the United States and had really just gotten to a point where we wouldn’t see these kinds of outbreaks happening,” Johnson said. “Obviously that has changed over the last 20-something years. And so we do see outbreaks pop up more frequently, but that is related to how much we are vaccinating our population. When we think about vaccine-preventable illnesses, they’re only preventable if we have adequate vaccination rates.”
