A child who was not vaccinated has died from measles in west Texas, the first death in an outbreak that began late last month and the first from measles in the U.S. since 2015.
The death was a “school-aged child who was not vaccinated” and had been hospitalized last week, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Wednesday in a statement. Lubbock health officials also confirmed the death, but neither agency provided more details. A news conference is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.
The measles outbreak in rural west Texas has grown to 124 cases across nine counties, which state health officials have said is Texas’s largest in nearly 30 years. There are also nine cases in eastern New Mexico.
Measles was declared eradicated in Canada in 1998, but with vaccination rates dropping, new cases are surging. 95 people have been infected in just the first two months of this year, compared to 147 for all of 2025.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed this is the first measles death in the country since 2015. Measles cases were the worst in almost three decades in 2019, and there was a rise in cases in 2024, including an outbreak in Chicago that sickened more than 60.
The outbreak is largely spreading in the Mennonite community in west Texas, where small towns are separated by vast stretches of oil rig-dotted open land, but connected due to people travelling between towns for work, church, grocery shopping and other errands.
Most cases are people under 18
Texas health department data shows the vast majority of cases in the area are among people younger than 18. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — which is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases — is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old for the first shot, with the second coming between the ages of four and six.
The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools in the U.S. But the measles cases in west Texas have been concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, state health department spokesperson Lara Anton has said, especially among families who attend small private religious schools or are homeschooled.
Gaines County, which has 80 cases, has one of the highest rates in Texas of school-aged children who opt out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14 per cent of K-12 children in the 2023-24 school year.
In Canada, 95 measles cases have been reported so far this year, says Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer. There were 147 measles cases for all of last year in Canada.
Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba reported new cases in the last week. Most of the cases haven’t been vaccinated, local health officials say.
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