Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appeared to downplay the seriousness of the West Texas measles outbreak that has killed a school-age child.
The child’s death, the first from the disease in a decade in the United States, was confirmed by Katherine Wells, director of public health at the health department in Lubbock, Texas. The child had not been vaccinated against the measles.
The outbreak has so far infected at least 124 people — mostly children — in rural West Texas.
“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said during a meeting with President Donald Trump’s cabinet at the White House. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
Kennedy also said that two people had died in the outbreak and that the people hospitalized were done so “mainly for quarantine.”
Wells, Lubbock’s public health director, and another spokesperson for the city said that there has been just one measles death in Texas so far. They said they confirmed it with state health authorities after Kennedy’s comments on Wednesday.
If a second death did exist, the city’s spokesperson said, “we’d know about it.”
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Lara Johnson, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, said in an email earlier that all of the children hospitalized with the measles were admitted because they were having trouble breathing. None of the hospitalized had been vaccinated against measles.
Johnson said that her team has cared for “around 20” kids with measles so far. The Texas Department of State Health Services has reported 18 hospitalizations so far, but number appears to be lagging, she said.
The outbreak has been limited so far to parts of Texas bordering New Mexico. That state has also reported nine measles cases, but officials have not said whether they are connected.
It’s unclear how the outbreak originated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Texas Department of State Health Services told NBC News that genotype testing had linked the outbreak to a strain of the measles virus called D8 currently circulating in Europe and the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean region, which includes countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
None of the samples have been linked to the vaccine.
This is the first measles death to be reported in the U.S. since 2015, when a Washington woman died. Health officials at the time said she’d likely been exposed at a clinic in a rural part of the state that was experiencing an outbreak.
Measles was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 because of widespread use of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR), according to the CDC.
Two doses of the shot are 97% effective in preventing the disease.
Brandy Zadrozny contributed.
