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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, downplayed the seriousness of an ongoing measles outbreak in Texas, falsely claiming that people had been hospitalized “mainly for quarantine” and misleadingly stating that the situation is “not unusual.” The Texas outbreak is already larger than any single outbreak last year and has led to the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015.
Kennedy’s remarks on Feb. 26 were his first public comments about the outbreak, which appears to have already spread to New Mexico. During a Cabinet meeting, a reporter asked President Donald Trump whether he was concerned, given news earlier in the day that an unvaccinated school-aged child had died from the viral disease. Trump asked Kennedy, who was in the room, to respond.
Kennedy, Feb. 26: We are following the measles epidemic every day. I think there’s 124 people who have contracted measles at this point, mainly in Gaines County, Texas. Mainly, we’re told, in the Mennonite community. There are two people who have died. We’re watching it, and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine. We’re watching it, we put out a post on it yesterday, and we’re going to continue to follow it. Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. Last year, there were 16. So it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.
Kennedy made no mention of vaccination. During an outbreak, offering measles vaccines to susceptible people is an important strategy to limit the spread of measles, which is one of the most contagious diseases. Vaccination shortly after a measles exposure can also prevent illness or reduce the severity.
A measles vaccine first became available in the U.S. in 1963. By 2000, the disease was declared eliminated, meaning measles has not been continuously spreading for a year or more in a single area. Prior to a measles vaccine, there were 3 million to 4 million cases each year in America, with 48,000 hospitalizations and 400 to 500 deaths.
Kennedy has a long history of sharing inaccurate information about vaccines, including the measles vaccine. He wrote in a forward to a 2021 book that Americans have been “misled … into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe, and effective.” He added that measles outbreaks “have been fabricated to create fear” to “inflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children.”
As recently as last month, while denying any responsibility for a deadly outbreak of measles in Samoa in 2019, Kennedy falsely said during a confirmation hearing that “most” of the people who died in the outbreak didn’t have measles and “we don’t know what was killing them.”
Several of Kennedy’s Cabinet meeting comments are incorrect or misleading. Only one death, not two, has been reported. Children were hospitalized because they needed treatment, not “mainly for quarantine.” And while Kennedy is correct that last year there were more outbreaks than there have been so far this year, that leaves out significant context.
We were unable to identify any Feb. 25 posts from HHS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about measles. A day after Kennedy’s remarks, however, the CDC posted a statement on the outbreak, saying: “Vaccination remains the best defense against measles infection.” The agency said it “continues to be in close communication with Texas health authorities about the measles outbreak in West Texas, following the death of a child. HHS sends its deepest condolences to the family.” The measles death is the first in a decade and the first death of a child from measles in the U.S. since 2003.
When asked about the death toll discrepancy, any posts and whether Kennedy was encouraging measles vaccination, Andrew G. Nixon, HHS’ director of communications, told us in an email on Feb. 26, “CDC is aware of the death of one child in Texas from measles, and our thoughts are with the family.” He added that the agency “continues to provide technical assistance, laboratory support, and vaccines as needed” to the health departments in Texas and New Mexico.
The Texas Department of State Health Services also confirmed the single death.
“We are aware of one death associated with the outbreak,” Lara M. Anton, a senior press officer for the agency, told us in an email.
As of Feb. 25, there were 124 confirmed cases of measles in Texas since late January, including 18 patients who have been hospitalized, according to state health officials. All but five cases have occurred in people who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status. Cases have been concentrated in and around Gaines County, a rural county with a large Mennonite population and lower measles vaccination rate. More than 100 of the cases have been in children.
Nine other measles cases, none of which have required hospitalization, have been reported in New Mexico as of Feb. 25, per the state’s health department. Officials suspect measles spread from Texas, as all the cases have occurred in a county bordering Gaines County, but the origin of the spread has not yet been confirmed.
False Hospitalization Claim
It’s not true, as Kennedy said, that the measles hospitalizations were “mainly for quarantine.” He likely meant to say isolation, which refers to separating people who are sick from those who are healthy to prevent the spread of a disease. Quarantine refers to the separation of people who have been exposed but are not yet showing symptoms. But in either case, he’s wrong.
“People in the hospital are there because they need treatment,” Anton told us. “We are not quarantining anyone in the hospital. People who are not vaccinated and have been exposed are asked to isolate at home.”
Dr. Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told us the hospital is the “last place” someone with the measles should go, unless they need care, due to the extreme contagiousness of measles and its relatively high complication rate.
“You do everything you can to keep measles out of the hospital because it’s a highly contagious virus and there’s a lot of vulnerable children in the hospital who are immunosuppressed and can’t be effectively vaccinated,” he said.
Dr. Lara Johnson, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital, the hospital in Lubbock, Texas, that is caring for kids with measles, including the child that died, said in an said in a Feb. 26 press conference that all of the hospitalized children had been admitted because of breathing issues.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine,” she also said, noting that the hospital provides supportive care, including supplemental oxygen and medicine for fevers. No measles-specific treatments exist.
Johnson and other hospital officials said during the briefing that their children’s hospital had admitted “about 20” kids for measles, all of whom were unvaccinated. “Several” required intensive care. In addition, a “handful” of children with measles had been seen at the emergency room, but did not need further hospitalization.
Dr. Summer Davies, a doctor who cared for the child who died from measles, told the Washington Post that the child who died had developed heart problems and was put on a ventilator. The child, she said, had been previously healthy.
Misleading Claim on Significance of Outbreak
Kennedy is correct that the U.S. typically has at least a few measles outbreaks each year, and that last year there were 16. According to the CDC, there were 285 measles cases in 2024, with 198 of those cases being outbreak-related. An outbreak is defined as three or more related cases.
This year, as of Feb. 20, CDC had recorded a total of 93 cases, 86 of which had occurred in three outbreaks. (Those statistics are now out of date, as just Texas and New Mexico together have at least 133 cases.)
But the comparison — and the suggestion that this is all par for the course — is misleading. Not only should outbreaks be rare, experts say, but 2024 was a relatively bad year for measles. And the current outbreak has several features that make it particularly concerning.
Offit called Kennedy’s statement that the U.S. has measles outbreaks every year “a little glib … as if this is acceptable.”
“We eliminated measles from this country by the year 2000. With a two-dose vaccine, we eliminated the most contagious disease,” Offit said. But in part because of false information that Kennedy himself has put out for several decades, he said, a critical percentage of parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children, making outbreaks possible.
Most parents vaccinate their children, but measles is so contagious that 95% of a community needs to be vaccinated or have prior immunity to prevent spread of the disease. A single dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective in preventing the disease and two are 97% effective.
Although Kennedy suggests last year’s outbreaks were normal, 2024 had the fourth highest tally of confirmed measles cases in the U.S. since 2000. Only 2014, 2018 and 2019 were higher. The latter two years included outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. In 2019, such outbreaks contributed to an annual total of more than 1,200 cases, making it the worst year for measles since 1992. 2014 is when there was a large outbreak at Disneyland in California, which also caused cases in 2015.
The current outbreak, notably, is already larger than any single outbreak in 2024 — and is still growing. Health officials in Texas and New Mexico both say that additional cases are “likely.” The other concerning detail is the measles death, which, as the first pediatric measles death in 22 years, is highly unusual, and has occurred after only about 124 cases.
Offit said the typical death rate from measles is about 1 in 1,000. It could be a fluke, but such a high death rate at this point in the outbreak could mean that it is much bigger than is being recognized.
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