United States: Since January, the Texan measles outbreak has involved almost 700 cases, 92 hospitalizations, and two children who did not receive the vaccine have lost their lives.
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On the other hand, new evidence indicates that more parents are following an important safety measure for their youngest kids.
Truveta, a healthcare data and analytics company, says that in Texas, 20% of children under 2 years had their measles vaccine early to help stop them from developing measles.
In typical cases, the CDC advises giving kids their measles vaccines at one year old, but for the outbreak, the agency said children as young as six months should be vaccinated, huffpost.com reported.
In comparison, Truveta spotted that the number of people receiving the first vaccination by 6 months increased in March and April 2025 after the US had a measles outbreak in 2019 with 1,261 cases.
Are people waking up? Better get your kids vaccinated while vaccinations are still available.
— Nativenolagal (@NativeNolaGal) May 21, 2025
Vaccination rate skyrockets in Texas as parents race to protect kids from measles https://t.co/R1TNReILeF
HuffPost spoke to Nina Masters, a senior applied research scientist at Truveta, who called this age group data good news.
“This means that parents are trying to protect their kids early,” she stated.
Houston is dealing with one of its worst measles outbreaks in 30 years. Measles is an easy-to-get virus in the respiratory group, and the best way to prevent infection is by getting the vaccine, the CDC explains.
For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, has been promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines.
After a young Texas girl lost her life to measles last month, Kennedy went to the girl’s funeral and acknowledged the benefits of the MMR vaccine, but he kept arguing in favor of alternative cures and insisted it is a matter of personal choice to get vaccinated, huffpost.com reported.