A person has dead measles in Texas, the first death for the disease in a decade in the United States.
The death, confirmed by Katherine Wells, director of Public Health of the Department of Health of Lubbock, is part of a rapid movement outbreak that is infected at least 124 people, mostly children, in western Rural Texas. The age of the patient who died was not clear.
The official count of the people who have been hospitalized are 18, according to the Department of Health Services of the State of Texas.
That number is not updated, said Dr. Lara Johnson, pediatrician and medical director of the Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock.
Johnson said in an email that his team has worried about “about 20” children with measles so far.
All those children, he said, were admitted because they had problems breathing. None had been vaccinated against measles.
The outbreak has been limited so far to parts of Texas that border New Mexico. That State has also reported nine measles cases, but the authorities have not said if they are connected.
This is the first measles death that will be reported in the USA since 2015, when a Washington woman died. Health officials at that time said that he had probably been exposed in a clinic in a rural part of the state that was experiencing an outbreak.
Measles was considered eliminated in the USA. In 2000 due to the general use of the measles-pothubella (MMR) measles vaccine, according to the centers for disease control and prevention.
Two doses of the shot are 97% effective to prevent disease.
