With Lubbock’s Director for Health, Cook, Ketreen Wells said he was not seeing any end for the outbreak, which is now spread over nine counties in Texas, many of which are low vaccination rates. “This outbreak is increasing,” Wells said, “Wells predicted how high the final case count could be when a reporter increased the possibility of several hundred.
So far, 116 out of 146 cases are under 18 years, 46 are between 0 and 4 years. Only five out of 146 were measles, mamps, and the Rubella (MMR) vaccine was at least one dose.
Messaging
On a more positive note, Wells reports that it seems that the outbreak puts some vaccine -affected parents on the staws to vaccinate their children. Just yesterday, in Lubbock, more than 50 children came to the city clinic for measles vaccines. Eleven of these children had a vaccine waiver, which means that their parents had previously gone through the state process to get their child to go to school to get a childhood vaccine in childhood. Wales said, “Which is really a good sign. This means that our message is coming out.”
So far, in this outbreak, which has spread in late January, the importance of messaging and vaccinations about the disease has come from state and local authorities. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only released A brief statement At the end of Thursday, which was not sent through the agency’s press distribution list. However, he noted that “vaccination against measles infection remains the best defense.”
During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, US Health Secretary and Anti -Advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a US health secretary and vaccine, answered a question about the outbreak, offering a variety of false information. Kennedy falsely claimed to the outbreak that “this is not unusual.” But, this is an extraordinary year for measles in the United States. As Epidemologist Katlen Jaitelina noted on Bluesky, this year the number of American measles cases is already there. Eight of the last 15 years crossed the total case count. And it’s only February.