Dr. Lara Johnson has been a pediatrician for nearly two decades. “This is the first time I’ve had any professional experience with a measles outbreak,” she told ABC News. She saw one travel-related case in medical school, around 2000, “but at that time we really thought that we’d eradicated measles from the United States.”
Johnson is chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s and Covenant Health in Lubbock, Texas. On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, the city’s spokesperson, Lauren Adams, confirmed that an unvaccinated school-aged child had died of measles, the first death tied to an outbreak in the western part of the state. It is the first measles death in the US in a decade.
The Texas Department of State Health Services said the child was hospitalized in Lubbock the week before and tested positive. A six-year-old girl who had been sick for three weeks was put on a ventilator and died of pneumonia, according to later accounts.
The count
DSHS had confirmed 124 cases by Wednesday, with 18 people hospitalized. Almost all were unvaccinated or of unknown status. Children and teenagers from 5 to 17 made up 62 of the cases, and 39 were four or younger. Gaines County, where the outbreak began, had 80 confirmed cases among residents.
New Mexico’s health department said the outbreak is “suspected” to have crossed the border. Lea County has nine confirmed cases, four of them in children.
Johnson said her health system has treated about 20 unvaccinated patients over the last several weeks. Most were kids admitted with trouble breathing from pneumonia. None has had encephalitis so far.
Doctors and the cabinet room
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and ABC News contributor, said the death “underscores the real danger of measles.” He added: “Given how contagious measles is, we anticipate more cases in the coming weeks.”
Dr. Ari Brown, an Austin pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said her office has fielded many calls from parents asking whether babies can get the shot early. “I’ve seen measles, and it’s horrible,” she said. “Those kids are super sick, and you’ve seen it once, and you can’t unsee it.”
At the Wednesday cabinet meeting, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his agency was following the Texas cases. He noted there had been four outbreaks so far this year against 16 last year. “It’s not unusual; we have measles outbreaks every year,” he said. The Texas cases alone come to nearly half of the 285 confirmed in 2024.
Kennedy also said the children were in hospital for quarantine. Johnson said at a press conference the same day that children are not hospitalized for quarantine.
Why vaccination matters here
The CDC says one infected person can pass measles to up to nine of every 10 susceptible close contacts. It recommends two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at 12 to 15 months and the second at 4 to 6 years. One dose is 93% effective and two are 97% effective.
About 93% of kindergarteners nationwide received select routine childhood vaccines, MMR included, in the 2022-23 school year, according to a November 2023 CDC report. The figure was 95% before the pandemic.
Texas declared the outbreak over on August 18, 2025, after 762 reported cases.
Sources
- Measles death of unvaccinated child in Texas outbreak is 1st fatality in US in a decade
- 2025 Southwest United States measles outbreak – Wikipedia
