The measles outbreak centered in the South Plains region soared past a combined 500 cases in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma on Friday, according to health officials.
Texas has seen 481 measles cases amid the outbreak that began in late January, according to the latest update from the state’s Department of State Health Services. Fifty-six people have been hospitalized and one unvaccinated child has died, the first measles death in the United States in a decade.
The outbreak continues to be concentrated in children who have not received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or whose vaccination status is unknown.
Health officials in New Mexico and Oklahoma have said cases in those states are also connected to the Texas outbreak.
New Mexico reported 54 cases on Friday, while Oklahoma reported 10. New Mexico has also reported one suspected measles death, an unvaccinated adult who tested positive for the virus after dying.
The latest DSHS update comes one day after Harris County health officials reported that a child with no recent travel history tested positive for measles. The testing was performed by a commercial laboratory and must be verified by DSHS. The case is not included in the DSHS update on Friday.
Texas has reported a total of six measles cases in 2025 that are not connected to the South Plains outbreak, including three in Houston and one in Fort Bend County. Most of those cases are associated with international travel, and they are not included in the Texas outbreak total of 481.
That’s an increase of 59 cases since the Tuesday update. It’s not slowing down.
Here’s more on that new Harris County case.
A child in northwest Harris County who had no recent travel history tested positive for measles, health officials said Thursday.
Harris County Public Health was notified Thursday that testing conducted by a commercial laboratory confirmed the child had measles, said Dr. Ericka Brown, the county’s local health authority. Investigators are still working to determine how the child was exposed to the virus, and whether the case is associated with the ongoing Texas outbreak that started in the South Plains region.
The Harris County child has since recovered from the illness and did not need to be hospitalized, Brown said during a media briefing.
The child received one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine prior to the infection, Brown said. She declined to say whether the child is too young to have received a second dose, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for children 4 to 6 years old.
Harris County Public Health launched a contact-tracing investigation to identify anyone who may have been exposed to the child, Brown said. She declined to say exactly how many individuals may have been exposed.
“We do know that obviously, because it is a child, there are family members who are involved, and we are investigating all contacts,” she said.
Brown said that, for the time being, she is not concerned the case will lead to substantial community spread in Harris County because about 94% of residents are protected by at least one dose of the MMR vaccine. That’s just under the threshold of 95% that public health experts say is necessary to achieve herd immunity, which prevents widespread outbreaks.
“Could we be better? Of course. We always strive for 100%,” Brown said. “But Harris County is doing pretty well in terms of their vaccinations.”
The story says that this is the first case of measles in unincorporated Harris County in over five years. The other two cases in the county were in Houston. None of them are related to the Gaines County outbreak, so they’re not in the official count of 481.
All this is happening as support for fighting measles and other infectious diseases is being cut.
Houston Health Department expects the Trump administration’s abrupt cancelation of a federal grant program started during COVID to punch a $42 million hole in its planned spending, including $12 million for personnel, as officials assess the potential impact on local public health.
In a statement, officials confirmed the loss of funding, but said they would have no further comment at this time, nor would they outline how the money was used.
“We are still assessing the full impact on our programs and services,” health department spokeswoman Tucker Wilson said.
In fiscal 2025, city health officials planned to spend $170.9 million on various programs and initiatives, of which $71 million was expected to come from state and federal grants.
Since 2020, Houston Health Department has received more than $400 million via various federal grant programs initiated during the pandemic to provide vaccines, address health disparities in low income areas and reopen schools following the global lockdown.
Federal officials informed Texas on March 24 that a number of COVID-era grant programs coordinated through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would end immediately. State officials were told, as of March 24, to halt all spending related to the programs funding immunizations, lab work and health disparities in low-income areas.
In Texas, more than $800 million in health department spending is affected, though the final totals remain uncertain. In a statement Tuesday, the Texas Health and Human Services Department said it was “working to a compile a list of affected programs and will have a list available soon.”
Other health departments in the Houston area also confirmed some funding losses, including Galveston County, which reported a loss of $2.7 million.
Here are a few headlines for you if you want some more of that:
Dozens of free measles vaccine clinics close in Texas as federal funding is cut. “Many clinics had been planned at schools in the Dallas area with low vaccination rates,” says the subhed.
As Texas Measles Outbreak Hits 422 Cases, Dallas County Cancels 50 Vaccine Events After DOGE Cuts. That sound you hear is Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick not saying a goddamn thing.
During a Past Measles Outbreak, RFK Jr. Dismissed Concern as “Hysteria”.
RFK Jr. fired veterinarians working on bird flu because he’s incompetent.
Oops! RFK Jr. scrambles to rehire essential employees fired by mistake. Do you feel healthy again yet, punk? Well, do you?
Meanwhile, in other states.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement late Monday a measles case was confirmed in an unvaccinated adult in Pueblo, Colorado, who recently traveled to an area of Mexico experiencing a measles outbreak—the state’s first confirmed measles case since 2023, according to The Denver Post.
In New Mexico, which has the second-highest number of measles cases in the country, Lea County is home to 52 of the state’s 54 confirmed measles cases, and is about 47 miles from Gaines County, Texas, where the majority of Texas’ measles cases have been detected.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 24 confirmed cases as of Wednesday and Jill Bronaugh, the department’s communications director, told Forbes genetic sequencing of one case is “consistent” with a link to outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico.
And here’s Ohio.
Two more people have contracted measles in Knox County, bringing the total number of infected individuals in that county to three, the county’s public health agency reported Monday.
A laboratory test conducted on March 29 found that the two infected people were international travelers in Knox County, Knox Public Health announced Monday in a news release. The two infected people have been quarantined, and their symptoms are being monitored.
Knox Public Health said they have been conducting contact tracing and found that no additional close contact was identified as a result of the positive cases.
[…]
The CDC considers three or more cases an outbreak. Ten reported cases in Ohio have been reported in Ashtabula County in the northeast corner of the state, and the three total now in Knox County represents a second outbreak. None of the people in the confirmed cases in Ohio were vaccinated against the disease.
They didn’t have a Friday update, so this is what we have for now. I’ll close with a profile of Katherine Wells, the oft-quoted health department director in Lubbock, where many of the patients that have been hospitalized are or have been.
Katherine Wells was tapping her phone.
It was the last week of January, and the director for the Lubbock Health Department had a jam-packed schedule. She was working with her team to put in place the new community health plan. Flu cases were on the rise. She had media interviews lined up to talk about stopping the spread.
She refreshed her email again. And there it was — confirmation that someone in nearby Gaines County had tested positive for measles. It was the first for the region in 20 years.
She took a deep breath.
Two months later, with more than 400 cases across Texas, Wells is the first to admit things feel eerily similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. And just like then — when police guarded her home after she received death threats — Wells’ work is facing questions from skeptics.
“People accuse me of creating the measles outbreak to make the health department look more important,” Wells said. She laughed as if she was used to it.
The reputations of public health institutions have taken a beating in the last five years as the pandemic became a political flashpoint. Some people saw public health leaders as heroes for urging people to wear masks, stay away from big crowds and get the vaccine. Others saw them as villains bent on robbing Americans of their freedoms.
Wells has served as the public health director for 10 years. Long before the measles outbreak and COVID, she navigated situations like Lubbock’s high sexually transmited infections and teen pregnancy rates. Lubbock is the largest city in Texas’ South Plains, with nearly 267,000 residents. It’s also largely conservative. More than 69% of Lubbock County voted for President Donald Trump last November.
Lubbock also stands as a critical medical hub for the South Plains, and Wells is the leader. With a dearth of rural hospitals, physicians, and limited care at clinics, people from all over the region flock to Lubbock for health care. This is how Lubbock became entangled in the measles outbreak. Most of the cases have been recorded in nearby rural Gaines County, where 280 cases have been identified. Patients have sought medical care in Lubbock.
Like many public health directors, most people didn’t know Wells until March 2020, when the city and the rest of the country was upended by the COVID pandemic. As she led the city through the crisis, she became a household name — for better or worse.
Probably mostly worse. And it won’t be any better this time around. I wish her and her colleagues all the best.
The Pitt. Season one, episode 14. Measles….and what it can/could do.