2 weeks Ago By Kathryn McNutt
Experts agree the current measles outbreak in neighboring Texas and New Mexico is spreading and likely will be around for a long time. “It’s a highly, highly infectious disease,” said Dr. James Kirk, drawing a comparison to the recent wildfires.
“Unvaccinated people are like dry tinder just waiting for the spark.” Kirk, an infectious disease specialist at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, said the outbreak could “smolder along for two or three years.
” Measles cases in West Texas and New Mexico grew to 351 as of Friday. Two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes. The U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that 378 cases of measles have been confirmed across 18 states since January, with 90% of cases being directly associated to three clusters considered to be outbreaks. As of Thursday, there have been four probable cases reported in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health .
OSDH launched a centralized location for measles updates last week at Oklahoma.gov/health/measles. Case summaries will be posted every Tuesday at noon as new cases are detected.
The summary will include total cases, probable and confirmed; hospitalizations; deaths and vaccination status of cases. The webpage also contains other resources like frequently asked questions, kindergarten survey vaccination data and health alert memos. Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that is 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.
An estimated 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated to prevent measles from finding a vulnerable “host” to spread to. “The population has seen declining rates of vaccination, and it’s weakened our herd immunity,” Kirk said. “When we fall below that threshold, we’re at risk not only for this outbreak but others (polio, mumps and rubella) that surely will follow.
” According to OSDH data, 98.83% of the 10,113 kindergartners who attended school within Oklahoma County in 2023-24 attended a school that completed the kindergarten survey. The results show 84.
16% of the surveyed kindergartners within the county were up to date on all their vaccines. Disinformation is leading some parents not to vaccinate their children against diseases that have been virtually eradicated, Kirk said. “We’ve become unfamiliar with these diseases.
They’re not in the memories at all for most people,” he said. “The fear factor may be what’s missing.” Dr.
Paul Offit, pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said with the rate of immunization among kindergarteners starting to drop, it’s not surprising to see measles spreading “because this is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases.” Before the measles vaccine in 1963, there would be 3 to 4 million cases of measles every year in this country, Offit said in a recent video posted on the website of the hospital, where he is director of the Vaccine Education Center. “There would be 48,000 people hospitalized – mostly children less than 15 years of age – and there would be 500 people who died, again mostly children,” he said.
“When they died, they died from severe dehydration or severe pneumonia or encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain. It is a terrible disease.” Philadelphia experienced a measles outbreak in 1991-92 that involved about 1,400 cases and nine deaths.
Offit said it centered on two fundamentalist religious groups that refused to vaccinate children and refused medical care for those who were infected. That resulted in a death rate of 6 per 1,000, higher than the typical 1 per 1,000, he said. A 1999-2000 outbreak in the Netherlands involved about 3,400 people, mostly children, and three deaths.
It centered on an orthodox reform church, which for the most part chose not to vaccinate, Offit said. A 2018-19 outbreak in Brooklyn involved about 650 cases and no deaths. It centered on an ultra-orthodox Jewish community that was under-vaccinated, he said.
Now in 2025 the outbreaks in West Texas and New Mexico again center on an under-vaccinated Mennonite group, he said. Offit said 44 states allow religious exemptions from childhood vaccinations. Oklahoma requires children to be vaccinated to attend school but allows parents to declare medical, religious or philosophical reasons for exemption from the law.
“There has been a gradual erosion in vaccine rates, as reported recently by the CDC that more parents are choosing nonmedical exemptions – either religious exemptions or philosophical exemptions – for their children,” he said. “This is something that we’re going to be living with I think more and more as vaccine rates erode.”.
