Measles Outbreak Hits Town in Texas

As of Tuesday, 22 children and two adults had been infected, all of whom were unvaccinated, local officials said.

A worsening measles outbreak has taken root in Texas, sickening two dozen and hospitalizing nine on the western edge of the state, where childhood vaccination rates have dwindled in recent years.

As of Tuesday, 22 children and two adults had been infected, all of whom were unvaccinated, local health officials said. The outbreak comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a staunch critic of childhood vaccines, has been nominated to be the country’s next health secretary, causing public health experts to worry that similar upticks of preventable illnesses will become more frequent.

“There’s a feeling this is going to be more and more common,” said Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease expert at Duke University.

The Texas outbreak has so far been limited to residents of Gaines County, which borders New Mexico and has roughly 20,000 residents. Last year 82 percent of kindergarten students received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, according to state data. That figure is roughly 10 percentage points lower than the average vaccination rate in Texas public schools and far below the federal target of 95 percent for measles vaccination.

Vaccination rates have been declining nationwide since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and now sit below 93 percent. An estimated 280,000 kindergartners in the United States do not have documentation of an M.M.R. vaccine, according to federal data.

Texas public schools require children to have received certain vaccines, including the M.M.R. shot, but parents can apply for an exemption for “reasons of conscience,” including religious beliefs.