What you should know about the contagious virus
Story by DEVI SHASTRI
Measles outbreaks in West Texas and New Mexico are now up to more than 250 cases, and two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes.
Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000.
Here’s what you need to know about measles in the U.S.
How many measles cases are there in Texas and New Mexico?
Texas state health officials said Tuesday there were 25 new cases of measles since the end of last week, bringing Texas’ total to 223. Twenty-nine people in Texas are hospitalized.
New Mexico health officials announced three new cases Tuesday, bringing the state’s total to 33. The outbreak has spread from Lea County, which neighbors the West Texas communities at the epicenter of the outbreak, to include one case in Eddy County.
Oklahoma’s state health department reported two probable cases of measles Tuesday, saying they are “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks.
A school-age child died of measles in Texas last month, and New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in an adult last week.
Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.?
Measles cases have been reported in Alaska, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines an outbreak as three or more related cases — and there have been three clusters that qualified as outbreaks in 2025.
In the U.S., cases and outbreaks are generally traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. It can then spread, especially in communities with low vaccination rates.
Do you need an MMR booster?
The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.
People at high risk for infection who got the shots many years ago may want to consider getting a booster if they live in an area with an outbreak, said Scott Weaver with the Global Virus Network, an international coalition. Those may include family members living with someone who has measles or those especially vulnerable to respiratory diseases because of underlying medical conditions.
Adults with “presumptive evidence of immunity” generally don’t need measles shots now, the CDC said. Criteria include written documentation of adequate vaccination earlier in life, lab confirmation of past infection or being born before 1957, when most people were likely to be infected naturally.
A vial of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is on display at the Lubbock Health Department Feb. 26, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP)
By Jeff Cercone
March 7, 2025
A measles outbreak in West Texas had sickened at least 198 people as of March 7, with 23 patients hospitalized and one dead. The outbreak originated with Texas residents who had not traveled internationally. Health officials have not determined the source of the outbreak.
Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, doesn’t have the 95% vaccination rate health experts say is needed to prevent community spread. Amid an outbreak of the highly contagious measles virus in West Texas, some on social media sought to blame former President Joe Biden’s border policies.
A Feb. 26 Threads post said, “Update: Plandemic 2.0 – Mainstream Media pushes fear campaign about measles in Texas, hoping to push more people to get vaccinated and try to make RFK Jr look bad, although this disease was allowed to enter due to Biden’s open borders!!”
RELATED: False claim spreads that Texas measles outbreak linked to border
The post, which referenced President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
Measles is an airborne viral disease that can cause serious complications, including a rash with visible flat, red spots on a person’s body. It is mostly preventable by vaccine. Two doses of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine are 97% effective against measles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
We found other social media posts blaming Biden’s border policies for the measles outbreak in Texas’ South Plains region. But there’s no evidence that an influx of immigrants is behind the measles outbreak, the source of which is unknown, Texas health officials said.
There were historically high levels of immigration during Biden’s term. About 4.3 million people were released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings from February 2021 to November 2024, per Department of Homeland Security data. That included children who traveled without parents and people who scheduled appointments at official ports of entry and were given humanitarian parole, a temporary legal status to live and work in the U.S.
As of March 7, the Texas Department of State Health Services had reported 198 measles cases, including 23 patients hospitalized and the death of a child.
At a March 3 state House of Representatives health committee hearing, state Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, asked Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas’ Health Services commissioner, if an increase in “foreign nationals” could be the source of the outbreak.
Shuford said international travel is a common source of measles outbreaks, but in this one, the source is not evident.
“For this particular outbreak, we don’t know the individual who introduced it into the community or what the risk factor was for bringing it in,” Shuford said. “We know that measles is alive and well in other parts of the world, and so all it takes is one traveler to bring it in.”
Olcott pressed Shuford further on the topic, asking if it’s possible the outbreak wouldn’t have happened had there not been a surge in migrants across the southern border.
Shuford said she couldn’t “pin it on this” and brought up past examples of how international travel has led to measles outbreaks in undervaccinated communities, citing a 2018-19 outbreak in a New York Orthodox Jewish community that began with someone who had traveled to Israel.
“I don’t have any data that would say yes or no to this outbreak,” about immigrants, Shuford said, noting vaccination rates had been falling in the area for a while and it was “ready for an outbreak.”
“Whether that introduction came from travelers there or travelers from other places, I don’t have any data to say,” Shuford said.
Eighty of the Texas cases were among people who had not been vaccinated against measles. Five others had at least one dose of the vaccine and the vaccination status of 113 others was unknown, the state said.
The bulk of the outbreak’s cases, 137 (69%), were reported in rural Gaines County, where measles vaccination coverage is lower than the 95% rate health experts say is necessary for herd immunity.
Unrelated to the West Texas outbreak, the state reported four cases in Harris, Rockwall and Travis counties that involved people who had traveled internationally.
Texas health data shows that in Gaines County’s largest school district, Seminole, about 82% of kindergarten students were vaccinated for measles in the 2023-24 school year. In Gaines County, 17% of its kindergarten students filed for vaccine exemptions.
Gaines County also has a large Mennonite community, which Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton has previously described to the Associated Press as “undervaccinated,” although she said the church wasn’t to blame for that. Mennonites are part of the Anabaptist family of Christian churches and there are about 40 different Mennonite groups in the U.S.
A pastor at Seminole’s Mennonite Evangelical Church told the Houston Chronicle that it’s a “misconception” that all Mennonites aren’t vaccinated, and that church doctrine doesn’t oppose vaccination.
Anton told PolitiFact that the first Texas cases in the outbreak were in residents who had not traveled internationally and it’s unknown how they were exposed. The department doesn’t collect a person’s citizenship status during disease investigations, she said.
The source of the outbreak may never be known, she said.
“We probably won’t ever know due to how the virus spreads and how contagious it is,” Anton said.
People with measles are contagious for four days before showing symptoms and the virus can linger in the air for two hours after an infected person leaves a room, Anton said: “It is entirely possible that the person who exposed the first Texas case to measles wasn’t ever in the same room at the same time as the first case reported to public health.”
There have been past measles outbreaks involving migrants. In March 2024, nearly 60 migrants at a temporary shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood tested positive for the virus.
Texas isn’t the only state reporting measles cases, though it has the most. The CDC reported 222 cases nationally in 12 jurisdictions as of March 6.
New Mexico has reported 30 measles cases as of March 7, including the death of an unvaccinated person in Lea County, which is across the Texas border from Gaines County.
Thereby. A doctor can order a lab test called an MMR titer to check your levels of measles antibodies. But health experts don’t always recommend this route and insurance coverage can vary. Getting another MMR shot is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says.
People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don’t need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective measles vaccine made from “killed” virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. That also includes people who don’t know which type they got.
What are the symptoms of measles?
Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash. The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over a dangerous level of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC.
How can you treat measles?
There’s no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable.
Why do vaccination rates matter?
In communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — diseases like measles have a harder time spreading through communities. This is called “herd immunity.”
But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots.
The U.S. saw a rise in measles cases in 2024, including an outbreak in Chicago that sickened more than 60. Five years earlier, measles cases were the worst in almost three decades in 2019.
AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Here’s what you should know:
Measles have a 97% survival rate. It is more deadly to get childhood vaccinations. Lost respect for the medical profession when I saw the TikTok dancing nurses. They danced while people died.
Where did you go to medical school?
The AP is funded MONTHLY by Big Pharma. Here’s a fact the AP will not report. There are 16 times more deaths from the MMR vaccine than from healthy people with Measles. FACT: The reports sound like it gained momentum, at least, in the Mennonite community.
I’d say quarantine them but I just saw a map or where they live. Pretty isolated.
Religious freedom (except they don’t seem to prohibit vaccines, god will take care of them) vs the greater good.
Actually my thoughts are that the measles outbreak originated because of the open border.
Kennedy is a vaccine denier and total nut. He has embraced a number of bizarre conspiracy theories. HIV does not cause AIDS. The government is secretly making chemtrails. Brought a dead bear cub to Central Park.
In an op-ed recently, Kennedy highlighted vitamin A as beneficial for reducing the risk of death from measles and wrote that “good nutrition remains the best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses.”
Kennedy has said that no vaccine is safe and effective.
Watch a film of him saying that. “In July 2023, speaking to podcast host Lex Fridman , Kennedy was asked if any vaccines were “good.” He replied, “I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing,” but then said, ‘There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.'”
Source: Newsweek. “RFK Jr. Says, ‘I’ve Never Been Anti-Vaccine’—Here Are the Facts” Published Nov 07. 2024.
Five years after the pandemic, the world is poorly prepared for another one