A Texan health authority warns of “measles parties” than the Outbreak in West Texas grew too at least 146 casesWith 20 hospital and hospital and An unvaccinated child in school -age age dead. The outbreak is still mainly with children who are not vaccinated.
In a press conference organized by the city of Lubbock, Texas, Ron Cook, Chief Health Officer of the Health Sciences Center at Texas Tech University Health Sciences in Lubbock offered a strong warning for Texans.
“I want you to hear that it is not good to organize measles parties, because what can happen – we cannot predict who is doing badly with measles, may be hospitalized, may be pneumonized or encephalitis and or die from it,” said Cook. “So that’s a stupid idea of
Lubbock is about 90 miles northwest of the era of the outbreak In Gaines CountyWhich is one of the least vaccinated counties of the state. It recorded 98 of the 146 cases of outbreak. While Lubbock only reported two of the 146 cases, patients from other parts were treated in Lubbock. This includes the first two cases in the break as well as the child who died of the infection at the beginning of this week and who was not based in Lubbock.
It is unclear whether measles parties appear in Gaines or elsewhere. “It was mostly … Social Media Speech,” said Cook in response to ARS. He found that measles parties and chickenpox parties were more common decades ago before the vaccines were available for both diseases. But he warned again of the dangers today. “Please don’t. It is just stupidity; It plays roulette, ”he said.
Cook, together with Lubbock’s director of public health, Katherine Wells, said you see no end for the outbreak, which now includes nine counties in Texas, of which many low vaccine rates have. “This outbreak will continue to grow,” said Wells, refusing to predict how high the county of the last case could be after a reporter had increased the possibility of several hundred.
So far, 116 of the 146 cases under the age of 18 are 46 4 or below. Only five of the 146 were vaccinated with at least one dose of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR).
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Wells reported that the outbreak seemed to influence some vaccine shirt parents in order to let her children vaccinate. Just yesterday, over 50 children came to the city’s clinic for measles vaccines in Lubbock. Eleven of these children had vaccine exceptions, which means that their parents had previously passed the state process to free their child from getting routine vaccines for children for school. “This is a really good sign; That means our message comes out of it, ”said Wells.
So far, it broke out in the end of January that the news about the disease and the importance of vaccination comes exclusively from state and local authorities. The centers for the control and prevention of diseases have only released A short statement In the late Thursday, which was not sent via the agency’s press sales list. However, it was found that “vaccination remains the best defense against measles infections”.
During a cabinet seat on Wednesday, US health secretary and lawyer of anti-accine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., answered a question of outbreak and offered a variety of inaccurate information. Kennedy played down the outbreak and wrongly claimed that “it is not unusual”. In fact, this is an unusual year for measles in the USA. As the epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina found on Bluesky, the number of US masern cases already has this year Exceeded the total number of cases from eight of the past 15 years. And it is only February.
