By JAMIE STENGLE
Associated Press
A day care facility in a Texas county that's part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.
West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 481 cases Friday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Mexico.
Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.
As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.
“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.
There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said, and most have had least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.
“We do have some children that have only received one dose that are now infected,” she said.
The public health department is recommending that any child with only one vaccine get their second dose early, and changed its recommendation for kids in Lubbock County to get the first vaccine dose at 6 months old instead of 1. A child who is unvaccinated and attends the day care must stay home for 21 days since their last exposure, Wells said.
Case count and hospitalization numbers in Texas have climbed steadily since the outbreak began, and spiked by 81 cases from March 28 to April 4, with 16 more people hospitalized in that time.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with Texas officials Monday to determine how many people it would send to West Texas to assist with the outbreak response, spokesman Jason McDonald said Monday. He expected a small team to arrive later this week, followed by a bigger group on the ground next week.
The CDC said its first team was in the region from early March to April 1, withdrawing on-the-ground support days before a second child died in the outbreak.