ANTI VAXXERS: IT'S OUR RIGHT FOR OUR KIDS TO DIE AND INFECT OTHERS: I KNOW, LET'S BLAME ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

By Terry Langford
The Texas Tribune

Texas’ health commissioner told lawmakers Monday they are still trying to determine the origin of a South Plains-Panhandle measles outbreak more than a month after the first patients reported symptoms.

“I cannot link this particular outbreak,” Dr. Jennifer Shuford, who oversees the Texas Department of State Health Services, told the House Committee on Public Health. “We don’t know what the link is.”

During Monday’s hourlong discussion – the first time the Legislature has meaningfully addressed the outbreak in a hearing since the first case was reported in January – Shuford fielded questions about the state’s response, as well as those posed by Republican lawmakers about vaccine risks and whether the cause of the outbreak was due to illegal immigration.

Rep John BUcy, D-Austin asked why the biggest outbreak in years was happening now in Texas.

Shuford explained that the elimination of measles depends on a community having an immunization of at least 95 percent to keep the disease from spreading.

“At 95 percent  we have what’s called herd immunity,” she said. ”We know when those vaccine levels get lower than 95 percent that there’s enough unprotected people together to cause an outbreak.”

What happened in Gaines County, she said, was that measles was able to latch onto a community where there were lower immunization rates.

While Gaines County is the center of this outbreak, infections have spread to eight other surrounding counties. Shuford told lawmakers Monday that the number of cases from the outbreak has increased to 158 and that four other measles cases – two in Harris County, one in Rockwall County and one in Travis County – have also been reported but linked to international travel and unrelated to the ongoing outbreak.