The nation’s top health official wrote in an opinion piece Sunday that the measles vaccine has benefits but he stopped short of calling on parents to inoculate their children from the deadly disease.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged parents to consult with health care providers "to understand their options" on getting their children the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” Kennedy wrote in the article for Fox News. “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”
Kennedy also suggested the use of vitamin A as a treatment.
The article appeared as vaccine resistance hardens in Texas, where health officials say the number of people with measles has increased to nearly 150. Last week, measles was cited in the death of a school-aged child who was not vaccinated.
Kennedy has previously criticized MMR vaccines, although research and real-world use has proven that they are safe and effective.
In the opinion article, he called the Texas outbreak a “call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services said cases span over nine counties in Texas, including almost 100 in Gaines County, on the western border. Twenty patients have been hospitalized.
The child who died Feb. 24 is the first U.S. death from the highly contagious but preventable respiratory disease since 2015, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The child was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility said the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.
Almost all of the cases reported involved unvaccinated individuals or individuals whose vaccination status is unknown.
The virus has largely spread through rural, oil rig-dotted West Texas, with cases concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, state health department spokesperson Lara Anton has said.
Gaines County has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.
Texas law allows children to get an exemption from school vaccines for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs. Anton has said the number of unvaccinated kids in Gaines County is likely significantly higher because homeschooled children's data would not be reported.
Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks
The U.S. had considered measles, a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours, eliminated in 2000, which meant there had been a halt in continuous spread of the disease for at least a year. Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60.
Florida reported 12 cases in 2024, including seven children during a brief outbreak in February and March at a Broward County elementary school.
