
Texas measles outbreak expected to last for months, though vaccinations are up from last year
Associated PressAs measles cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount. Texas’ outbreak, which has largely spread in undervaccinated Mennonite communities, could last a year based on studies of how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the U.S. Those studies showed outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the public health department in Lubbock, Texas. “It’s not an isolated population.” The outbreak includes 14 Texas counties, two New Mexico counties and four probable cases in Oklahoma, where health officials said the first two were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks. “But if it gets into another community, you just potentially start that clock over again.” If the outbreak goes on until next January, it would end the United States’ status of having eliminated measles, which is defined as 12 months without local virus transmission, said Dr. William Moss, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center. Texas health officials say they’d like to see more uptake in the communities at the epicenter of the outbreak, especially in Gaines County — where the childhood vaccination rate against measles is 82%.
History of this topic

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