Can’t get much slower than that.
Texas health officials reported only one new case of measles on Friday, the smallest increase since the outbreak began four months ago.
The latest update from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows there have been 718 measles cases across the state since the first were reported in late January in the South Plains region. The agency provides updates twice per week on Tuesdays and Fridays.
The one new case is in Gaines County, which has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The small county along the New Mexico border has reported 406 infections in total, more than 56% of all cases associated with the outbreak.
Experts told the Houston Chronicle they are cautiously optimistic the outbreak is subsiding, but Texas residents and public health officials must stay vigilant to prevent a resurgence. They also noted that it can take seven to 21 days for symptoms to appear after an exposure, so additional cases could be reported in the next few weeks.
[…]
The DSHS said there is ongoing measles transmission in seven counties: Cochran, Dawson, Gaines, Lamar, Lubbock, Terry and Yoakum. Dallam county was removed from the list because it has been 42 days since its last infectious case.
Texas has reported 15 measles cases in 2025 that are not connected to the outbreak, including four in Harris County, one in Fort Bend County and one in Brazoria County. Most of those cases were related to international travel, according to the DSHS.
Hey, if we’re really coming to a stop, that would be awesome, and a lot sooner than expected. I too remain cautious about this, because there’s still a lot of measles and unvaccinated people out there, but it may well be that a combination of exposure and response have choked this one off. If so, kudos to all of the exhausted professionals who have worked to get to this point. I wish you all a nice vacation.
And you’re going to need it, because we keep doing stuff like this that all but guarantees more and bigger future outbreaks.
The Texas House passed a bill Wednesday that would make it significantly easier for parents to exempt their children from public school vaccine requirements. Authored by Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, the legislation allows anyone to download the exemption form and eliminates the current requirement to request the form by mail and get it notarized. The form applies to vaccines such as those for polio, hepatitis A and B, and measles.
Hull said the bill would streamline government operations and save the state about $177,000 annually in postage and labor. She repeatedly emphasized during debate that “this bill is about where a form is printed,” downplaying concerns raised by Democrats and public health advocates. Critics warn that easier access to exemption forms will lead to lower vaccination rates, threatening herd immunity and putting medically vulnerable children at risk, as first reported by The Dallas Morning News.
Democrats attempted to amend the bill to include additional safeguards, such as requiring parents to read educational materials about vaccines and mandating that schools report immunization rates. These amendments were rejected, largely along party lines. Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, argued that the bill’s real-world effects would be “more kids opting out of immunization, more kids opting out of vaccines.”
Asking the question “when will we learn our lesson” presupposes that learning lessons is an aspect of this. The evidence of that is lacking. The best we can do here is weaken the forces of making us all sicker and more vulnerable, and that is something we can and need to do starting next year. As a reminder, Rep. Hull’s HD138 is a district that was very purple before redistricting, and is still somewhat purple now. In a good year, with a stronger opponent, we can take a run at her.
I’m just going to leave you with this.
The cries of sick children echoed down the hallway as Gilbert Handal walked into the measles ward for the first time. It was 1964 in Chile, and the young medical student had been assigned to Manuel Arriarán Hospital’s pediatric infectious disease unit.
Dozens of beds were crammed into the building, each holding a small, feverish body. Some children were struggling to breathe; others lay frighteningly still. Their parents waited helplessly, often outside the doors, while nurses and doctors moved solemnly through the ward. There was little they could do.
“That was just immediately before we had the measles vaccine,” Handal said. “I was just a student, and you’re just studying medicine, trying to save humanity and trying to save the children.
“We tried to save those kids, but many of them died,” he added.
Now 82 years old and a professor of pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases at Texas Tech Health in El Paso, Handal is sounding the alarm over low vaccination rates in West Texas, where a measles outbreak has infected 717 people and killed two school-aged children as of May 13. Though measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. at the turn of the century, rising vaccine hesitancy has fueled the largest surge of the disease in Texas in more than three decades.
“All the outbreaks we’ve had in this country have been associated with the lack of immunization,” he said. “People stopped immunizing their kids, and that was an error.”
Back in Chile, the second floor of the pediatric infectious disease unit was secluded, reserved for children infected with measles. Measles spreads primarily through the air, when infected people sneeze or cough.
The atmosphere was one of anxiety and exhaustion. As part of a team of six doctors, Handal spent up to 120 hours per week tending to rows of children battling high fevers, painful coughs and the signature red rash covering their bodies. According to Handal, the surge in measles cases was so overwhelming that the hospital’s internal medicine unit was often repurposed to care for sick children.
He says most of the children were infants and toddlers.
“The children know they’re sick, and that’s all they know,” Handal said. “They don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know anything, and the sicker they are, the more disconnected they get from you.”
[…]
Handal said he lost count of how many children died during his time in the ward. But he never became numb to it — just learned to manage the grief.
“You don’t get hardened, that’s a bad word to use. You kind of cope with it better, I guess,” he said. “I mean, it’s just – the pain is too much.”
The problem is there are fewer people like Dr. Handal who lived through that and remember it, and more people like Lacey Hull who are blissfully ignorant of it all. I wish I had a good answer for that.