The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said staff is on the ground in Texas due to the urgency of the deadly measles outbreak that’s infected over 150 people, most of whom are unvaccinated children.
The federal public health agency announced Tuesday that it will be offering onsite support to local officials for one to three weeks, “aiding in quick decision-making to control health threats.”
“This partnership ― known as an Epi-Aid ― is a rapid response by CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) to tackle urgent public health issues like disease outbreaks,” the CDC said.
In an accompanying statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the outbreak, which claimed the life of an unvaccinated child last week, is “a call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health.”
Kennedy, who has a long history of opposing vaccinations, did not on Tuesday encourage people to get vaccinated against the virus. He instead implored the public to work together to prevent future outbreaks, without offering specific details on how.
“Under my leadership, HHS is and will always be committed to radical transparency to regain the public’s trust in its health agencies,” he said.
The CDC’s announcement came as the Texas Department of State Health Services shared on Tuesday that there have been 159 confirmed cases of measles in the state since late January. Of those cases, 22 have required hospitalization. The total increased by 35 since the department’s last report on Friday.
“There has been one fatality in a school-aged child who lived in the outbreak area. The child was not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions,” the health department said of last week’s death.
More cases are expected due to the highly contagious nature of the disease, the department added.
In a Fox Newsop-ed published Sunday, Kennedy acknowledged the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is crucial to preventing potentially deadly disease, and he said he was “deeply concerned” about the measles’ spread.
“Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” he said, while also stressing that the decision to vaccinate “is a personal one.”
The op-ed was a reversal of comments he made at the White House late last month, when he dismissed the Texas outbreak, the largest the state has seen in decades, even after the child’s death. “It’s not unusual,” Kennedy told reporters. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”
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The child’s death from measles, which was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, was the nation’s first since 2015.
On Monday, Kennedy’s assistant secretary for public affairs, Thomas Corry, announced that he had resigned “effective immediately” from the HHS. His decision reportedly followed internal clashes within the department over Kennedy’s handling of the outbreak, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.