US measles outbreak surpasses 1,000 confirmed cases (AFP tally)
The measles outbreak in the United States has surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases, with three deaths so far, according to an AFP tally of public data.
The cases began in January in a rural area of Texas where a Mennonite religious community lives, an ultra-conservative population with a low vaccination rate.
It is reminiscent of the 2019 outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish communities of New York and New Jersey. There were more than 1,200 cases, but no deaths.
The measles vaccine is mandatory in the United States, but citizens of several states, including Texas, the second most populous, can request an exemption for religious or other reasons.
The use of these exemptions has continued to increase in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic due to growing distrust in health authorities and pharmaceutical companies.
AFP has recorded at least 1,005 cases of measles since the beginning of the year, 70% of them in Texas.
Three people have died, two of them young children, in the southwest of the country, the epicenter of the outbreak. The last child death from the disease in the United States was in 2003, three years after measles was declared eradicated thanks to vaccination.
"The situation is out of control," US pediatric infectious disease specialist Paul Offit told AFP, calling it the worst measles outbreak in the country in "30 years."
Measles causes fever, respiratory problems and skin rashes, and in some cases more serious complications, such as pneumonia and inflammation of the brain, which can cause serious consequences and death.
“It is the most contagious infectious disease in the world and it is spreading rapidly,” warns Offit, who fears that its magnitude is being underestimated.
According to several health care workers, “the number of cases in the United States could actually be closer to 3,000, or even more,” he says.
Many infected people do not go to the doctor “for fear of being forced to get vaccinated or because they think they do not feel sick enough,” Texas pediatrician Tammy Camp explained to AFP.
A situation made worse by the recent layoffs of thousands of Health Department employees and drastic financial cuts that complicate diagnostic efforts, Offit says.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has been accused of adding fuel to the fire by spreading false information, such as when he claimed on Fox News in March that the vaccine was “the cause of all the diseases that measles itself causes: encephalitis, blindness, etc.”
In another administration, “they would have asked him to step down before more children died,” Offit complains.
The secretary's comments, which oscillate between minimizing the seriousness of the situation, questioning the benefits of vaccination and promoting alternative remedies such as vitamin A, cause confusion among the population, confirms pediatrician Camp.
Some of the children she sees have symptoms related to excessive intake of vitamin A, a supplement that reduces the risk of complications in people suffering from malnutrition, but which can be dangerous if taken in excess, she explains.
“We are seeing more and more cases of diseases that can be prevented with vaccines,” warns the doctor, who cites the recent resurgence of cases of whooping cough, another infectious disease.
Before a vaccine was developed in the early 1960s, measles killed hundreds of children each year in the United States. Today, it still claims tens of thousands of lives worldwide.
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