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(CNN) — The first measles death in the growing outbreak in West Texas was a school-aged child.
The child was unvaccinated and had been hospitalised in Lubbock, Texas, said Lauren Adams, Lubbock city spokesperson.
This is the first US measles death since 2015, when a woman in Washington state died.
The number of confirmed measles cases reported in an outbreak in West Texas is now at 124, the Texas Department of Health Services said in an update Tuesday, an increase of 34 since late last week.
Eighteen people have been hospitalised, and most of the cases are in children ages 5 to 17.
At President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, he deferred a question about the measles outbreak in Texas to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said.
The bulk of the cases, 80, remain in Gaines County, where the outbreak began, but it has also been spread to eight additional counties. Most of the cases are in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Five cases were reported in people who said they had been vaccinated.
Measles is an airborne illness that can cause rash, fever, red eyes and cough. Severe cases can result in blindness, pneumonia or encephalitis, swelling of the brain. In some cases, the illness can be fatal.
While details on the specific death in Lubbock are still unknown, experts have long warned that measles complications that can result in death in children.
Up to 3 out of 1,000 children with measles will die from respiratory or neurological complications, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Specifically, 1 in 20 children with measles will develop pneumonia, the most common cause of death from the disease, according to Dr. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth Houston who was not directly involved with the Lubbock patient.
“These outbreaks last between two to six months. That’s a long time. That’s a lot of kids infected … death is rare, but tragic when it happens, but there are a lot of other sequelae, encephalitis, for example, and deafness. There’s a rare neurological disease that can happen. So, as you have more people infected, these sequelae become more common.”
The best way to stay protected against measles is to get vaccinated with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to experts.
The Lubbock Department of Health has opened free vaccination clinics which have given about 70 vaccinations since the start of the outbreak, according to city officials.
Coverage of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year did not get the vaccine. Other affected Texas counties also fall below a goal of 95%, set by the US Department of Health and Human Services, that’s necessary to help prevent outbreaks of the highly contagious disease.
Given how contagious measles is, health officials warn that cases may continue to rise in the area.
“I very rarely say I’m 100% sure of something, but I am 100% sure we will see an increase in cases … Texas as a state is under vaccinated, so there are susceptible people,” Troisi said.
She also worries because of the contagious nature of the disease: People don’t show symptoms before they become infectious, and the virus can stay in the air for up to two hours, even after a person with the virus leaves the area.
“Measles is the most infectious virus we know. However, it’s a harbinger of low vaccination rates, and it is quite likely we will start seeing outbreaks of other diseases that are vaccine preventable as well as these vaccine rates decrease,” Troisi said.
