| Parents
are calling to get their children vaccinated early. Mobile clinics are
popping up to offer free vaccines. It’s all part of an effort to curb
Texas’ worst measles outbreak in 30 years and its spillover into New Mexico. Texas
has 58 confirmed cases — a number that’s doubled in the past two weeks
— and 13 hospitalizations. Austin-based pediatrician Ari Brown says the true number of cases is probably in the hundreds. Gaines
County in West Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak, is home to a
Mennonite community, a religious group that requests exemptions for
vaccines in schools. Nearly 18% of children in the county were unvaccinated for the 2023-2024 school year, up from about 7% a decade earlier. The
outbreak is hundreds of miles from Austin, but Brown says parents are
still calling to ask about getting their children an early booster shot
before the recommended age of 5. She worries the outbreak could spread
and become a bigger issue in more populated areas of East Texas because
there are more pockets of unvaccinated communities and schools. Hospitals
in nearby Lubbock County saw the first few hospitalizations of cases.
Katherine Wells, Lubbock’s director of public health, says she has seen
parents who had not vaccinated their children take the risk seriously
and bring them in for vaccines. New
Mexico health officials on Wednesday announced that Lea County, Gaines’
immediate neighbor to the west, now has eight confirmed cases, which
prompted the state to immediately offer free mobile vaccination
clinics. While Lea County is about 94% vaccinated, that still leaves a
portion of the population vulnerable, says Miranda Durham, New Mexico’s
chief medical officer. “Diseases are mobile. People are mobile,” she says. More
than 2,600 children and adults have been vaccinated so far this year in
New Mexico, about 700 fewer than the same period last year. Health
officials hope that will improve as vaccination efforts ramp up. The
state health department’s phone line is also getting more calls asking
about early boosters for children, Durham says. And, the health
department is increasing communications with day care facilities and
schools to help spot symptoms. Measles can be deadly.
It’s also incredibly contagious. Symptoms can appear up to 14 days
after exposure, making early detection difficult. Plus, its early
symptoms — a high fever, cough and conjunctivitis — can look like
the flu before the red spots indicating a measles rash appear. The
biggest threats are to people who are unvaccinated, pregnant, have a
weakened immune system or are very young. More than half of the
hospitalizations last year were children under the age of 5, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health
officials are recommending that exposed babies 6 to 11 months old get
the first vaccine, followed by a second dose 28 days later. While people can die from measles, Brown says Americans haven’t seen this in years “because vaccines do their job.” — Jessica Nix |