For the first time in nearly ten years, the United States announced a death linked to measles on February 26 in Texas, which is in the grip of an epidemic of this highly contagious disease, the importance of which has been downplayed by the new Secretary of Health. This first death occurred in a child, Texas health authorities announced Wednesday morning, specifying only that he was " of school age " and was not " not vaccinated“.
He is dead " in the last 24 hours", said the city of Lubbock, in the northwest of the state, where he was hospitalized. This death comes as more than 130 cases have been recorded since the beginning of the year in Texas and the neighboring state of New Mexico, and a handful others elsewhere in the country.
While measles was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000 thanks to vaccination, infections have started to rise again in recent years, thanks to the drop in vaccination rates recorded since the Covid-19 pandemic. In Texas, the second most populous state in the country, nearly twenty people were recently hospitalized, and " all were unvaccinated" said Lara Johnson, chief medical officer of Lubbock Children's Hospital, during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
Asked earlier about the subject, the new American Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr, criticized for his anti-vaccine positions, had declared that " two people » were dead. Contacted by AFP, the Texas and New Mexico health departments, however, said they were not aware of a second death. The latter also minimized the seriousness of the situation, assuring that it was "not not unusual" . " We have measles epidemics every year" he said, saying however " monitor the development of the situation“.
"A matter of time"
Although the resurgence of measles cases is not new this year, their increase remains very worrying, insist caregivers. It's a deadly virus", recalled Lara Johnson, referring to the respiratory and neurological complications it can cause. She confided: " When I qualified as a doctor in 2002, I was convinced that I would never see a measles epidemic unless I chose to work abroad“.
For Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, " it was only a matter of time " before the United States recorded measles deaths again. Before the development of a vaccine in the early 1960s, the disease killed hundreds of children each year in the country, and continues to claim tens of thousands of lives worldwide.
In the United States, the last measles-related death was in 2015, when a woman in Washington state died of pneumonia caused by the virus. She was vaccinated but was on immunosuppressive medication.
Read alsoIn the United States, fear of a health catastrophe amid vaccine hesitancy
Exceptions
Despite this risk, more and more Americans are choosing not to vaccinate their children against this disease, amid growing distrust of health authorities and pharmaceutical companies. The proportion of preschool children vaccinated against measles—a mandatory condition—has fallen from 951% in 2019 to fewer than 931% in 2023 in the United States, with significant regional variations.
In much of the United States, parents can cite a reason other than a medical contraindication to avoid mandatory vaccination for their children. In Texas, you can just say you disagree.", Terri Burke of the Immunization Partnership, which promotes vaccination, recently explained to AFP.
In this context, many health professionals are concerned about the influence that could have Robert Kennedy Jr, who has previously spread false information about vaccination. The new minister notably mentioned a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism, a theory based on a rigged study that has been repeatedly refuted.
Most of the measles cases reported this year in Texas have been in a county with a large population of ultraconservative Mennonites, a religious community reminiscent of the 2019 outbreak in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey, which saw more than 1,100 cases.
English 
French