LOADINGERROR LOADING Texas’s measles outbreak has grown to more than 700 cases since January, requiring the hospitalization of 92 people and leading to the deaths of two unvaccinated children.
According to Truveta, a health care data and analytics company, 20% of Texas children younger than 2 years old who got a measles vaccine received their measles vaccine early to help prevent the disease.
Advertisement The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention usually recommends children get their measles vaccines starting at 1 year old, but amid the measles outbreak, the CDC said in March that children can get their measles vaccines starting at 6 months old.
Texas has seen its worst measles outbreak in nearly 30 years.
But Texas’ measles outbreak has largely affected the unvaccinated, like the Mennonites, an Anabaptist Christian group whose members are typically underimmunized.
Since January, the measles outbreak in Texas has risen to over 700 cases, necessitating 92 hospitalizations and the deaths of two unvaccinated children.
However, new data shows that more parents are taking important precautions to keep their youngest children safe.
Twenty percent of Texas children under the age of two who received a measles vaccination did so early in order to help prevent the illness, according to Truveta, a health care data and analytics company.
In March, the CDC announced that children can receive measles vaccinations as early as six months of age, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s standard recommendation that children receive measles vaccinations beginning at age one.
Truveta discovered that in March and April 2025, a significantly higher proportion of children received vaccinations beginning at 6 months of age than in 2019, when the U. A. had a measles outbreak, resulting in 1,261 cases overall.
This data is good news, according to Nina Masters, senior applied research scientist at Truveta, who spoke to HuffPost.
Parents are attempting to protect their children at a young age, she said.
The measles outbreak in Texas is the worst in almost three decades. According to the CDC, the best defense against measles, a viral respiratory disease that is among the most contagious, is vaccination.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has long been at the forefront of disseminating conspiracy theories regarding vaccines as the secretary of health and human services. Although he still promotes alternative treatments and characterizes vaccination as a personal decision, Kennedy acknowledged at the funeral of an unvaccinated 8-year-old Texas girl who died of measles last month that the MMR vaccine is the most effective method of preventing the illness.
Although Katherine Wells, the director of public health for the city’s health department in Lubbock, Texas, did not reply to HuffPost’s inquiry, she did tell NBC News in February that the department has been vaccinating children from families who previously did not believe in vaccines.
Wells told NBC News, “People are getting more and more anxious.”. Several children who had never received a vaccination before have received one from us; some of these children came from households that didn’t support vaccinations. “”.
The data from Truveta only included kids who were seen by a doctor or other healthcare provider at least three times during their first year of life. However, the measles outbreak in Texas has primarily impacted those who are not vaccinated, such as the Mennonites, a Christian Anabaptist group whose members are generally underimmunized.
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We are aware that a population seeking medical attention is reflected in the requirement that children see a provider three times during their first year of life, Masters stated. So, we wouldn’t expect those people to be included in the study if they are not seeking medical attention and are not vaccinating their children. “.”.
The Mennonites who reside in Seminole, Texas, in the western portion of the state, also known as Low German Mennonites, are originally from Mexico, where they were largely isolated from the 1920s until the 1980s, according to Steven Nolt, a history and Anabaptist studies professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, who spoke to ABC News in March.
My argument is that the so-called Low German Mennonites from Mexico, who are currently living in west Texas, lack the minimal level of vaccine acceptance that we observe among Old Order Mennonites and Amish in the United States in the middle of the 20th century. A. Since they were not in the United States, the people of Seminole missed the entire mid-century vaccination campaign. A. “So,” Nolt told ABC News.
