This one may be coming to an end, but the underlying conditions for it aren’t going away.
Texas appears to be past the worst of its largest measles outbreak in 30 years, but the state will be vulnerable to future outbreaks of the virus and other infectious diseases unless vaccination rates improve, experts said.
Texas has reported about three new measles cases per week since June 1, a far cry from the average of about 50 cases per week between Valentine’s Day and Easter. The state reported nine new cases on Tuesday.
Experts believe the outbreak has peaked in Texas, even as cases continue to spread in the state and other parts of the country.
“It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. “But right now it looks encouraging.”
The decline in cases is a promising sign, particularly in parts of West Texas that have been hit the hardest during the outbreak. But many Texas communities still fall short of the threshold of 95% vaccination coverage that is needed to achieve herd immunity, which prevents widespread outbreaks.
Unless vaccination coverage improves in those areas, measles outbreaks like the one in West Texas could become more common, said Kirstin Matthews, a science and technology policy fellow at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“I don’t think this is the last time we’re going to see this,” Matthews said. “I think we’re going to be seeing them on an annual basis.”
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Health officials see encouraging signs the Texas outbreak is in its final stages. Measles is no longer being detected in the wastewater in Gaines County or in Lubbock, the city’s director of public health, Katherine Wells, said Thursday.
Part of the decline is likely because so many unvaccinated children and adults have already been infected, Troisi said.
“Once you run through the group of unvaccinated people who are exposed, then the virus dies out,” she said.
Although Texas is reporting fewer cases, it could be some time before the state’s outbreak is officially over. Measles outbreaks are considered over once it’s been 42 days, or two full incubation periods for the virus, since the last case was identified. Texas identified its most recent case July 1.
Texas has seen a 14% increase in measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations amid the outbreak, with more than 423,000 shots administered through the first six months of 2025 compared to about 330,000 during the same timeframe last year, according to data from the state’s Department of State Health Services.
Some parents may have decided against vaccinating their children until this year because it had been so long since the state had seen a large measles outbreak, Wells said Thursday during a forum hosted by the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute.
“Now they’ve seen what can happen with measles,” Wells said. “They’ve heard about the deaths. They’ve heard about the hospitalizations. And now that risk is greater.”
The national county is now over 1300. This year’s outbreak was a specific confluence of factors, but the bottom line is there’s still a lot of unvaccinated people – mostly children – out there. While the numbers reported at the end of this story are encouraging, it’s a relatively small increase and it’s not clear to me that it’s anything more than a blip. I hope to be wrong about that, but between RFK Jr and our own Legislature, the pressures and incentives are all pointing in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s a couple of years before we have another big outbreak, but given the conditions it’s just a matter of time.