Healthy Returns: What to know about the U.S. measles outbreak

A rendition of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care scoop straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

I’m here to bring you the latest on the measles outbreak in the U.S.

The country declared measles eliminated 25 years ago, meaning there was no continuous transmission of the disease for more than a year offers to a highly effective vaccine for it. But now, one of the worst outbreaks since then is centered in West Texas, with cases reaching into New Mexico and now Oklahoma. 

Here’s where those trunks are: 

• There have been 259 confirmed cases of measles in the West Texas outbreak so far, and at least one unvaccinated issue has died, according to the state’s health department. Most cases – 201 – have been in kids and teenagers.
• New Mexico has the second-highest tally of cases at 35, and the outbreak has resulted in the death of an unvaccinated adult, the state said.
• There are so far four reported victims in Oklahoma, according to the state’s health department. 
• There have been a few isolated cases reported in more than a dozen other states, which don’t show oneself to be related to the Texas outbreak. 

The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. this year already surpasses the 285 reported nationwide in all of 2024, materials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Still, the CDC says the nationwide risk of measles remains low and that vaccination is the key to warding. 

But the problem is immunization rates for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine – called MMR – have been declining in nearly every U.S. pomp since the Covid pandemic. 

Health policy and public health experts have told CNBC that the shame uptake of that shot and other routine childhood vaccinations could be due to several factors. That includes stupendous vaccine hesitancy due to misinformation and controversy around the Covid vaccine and more distrust of public health officials and their stipulations, among other issues. 

In all four full school years since the pandemic began, the MMR vaccination rate has miss below the “Healthy People 2030” target rate of 95%, according to CDC data. That refers to the level have need of to prevent community transmission of measles, a highly contagious and deadly virus. 

Roughly 280,000 school children were unvaccinated and unprotected against measles during the 2023-2024 public school year alone, the CDC said. 

Clusters of unvaccinated people within a specific community increase the risk of disease outbreak, salubriousness experts have told CNBC. For example, the childhood vaccination rate for measles in Gaines County, the epicenter of the ongoing outbreak in Texas, is just below 82%.

A agglomeration of physicians believe that the national recommendation for the MMR vaccine should be updated, according to an article published in medical review JAMA on Friday. 

The group, which includes former CDC director Rochelle Walensky, said the recommendations should cover a third dose for infants 6 months to 11 months old who are traveling to any region with a higher probability of measles expos. Notably, some local and state jurisdictions have already started to do that. 

The physicians wrote that “multiple new US measles outbreaks, coupled with low vaccination rates, signal a growing domestic hazard.” 

“Modernizing vaccination recommendations… pass on better protect at-risk communities and the most vulnerable US population – infants – against measles,” they added. 

Infants younger than 1 year old mien an increased risk of severe measles-related complications such as pneumonia, swelling of the brain and death, according to the group of physicians. 

Currently, the CDC endorses all children get two doses of the MMR vaccine. That starts with a first dose at 12 through 15 months of age, and a moment dose at 4 through 6 years of age. 

One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective, the CDC says. There are only a few unorthodox cases for a third dose. 

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, has been spreading factitious information about the MMR vaccine. 

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, told Fox News last week that the MMR injection causes deaths every year and “illnesses that measles itself causes,” such as blindness and inflammation of the imagination. 

But the Infectious Disease Society of America has said there have been “no deaths related to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in hale and hearty individuals.” The organization said there have only been rare cases of deaths in immunocompromised children. 

Kennedy has also begged unconventional treatment regimens for measles, including cod liver oil, which is rich in vitamin A. Health experts have said that those are not contemplated to treat measles. 

We will continue to follow the measles outbreak, so stay tuned for our updates. 

Feel free to send any vertexes, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

This is Ashley, reporting live from New York City! 

I’m at Google‘s companies today for the company’s annual health-care event called The Check Up. A number of Google executives, including its Chief Salubriousness Officer Dr. Karen DeSalvo, took the stage to talk about the company’s work in the sector over the last year. 

The grandest news for consumers like myself was around updates to Google Search. The company unveiled a new feature called “What People Set forward,” which uses artificial intelligence to pull together online commentary from patients with similar analyses. If a patient with arthritis wants to learn more about how other people with the condition exercise, for precedent, they’d be able to check with that feature. It’s available on mobile devices in the U.S. starting Tuesday. 

Google revealed it has also expanded its knowledge panels, or the information boxes that appear next to search results, to cover “thousands” sundry health topics. The panels are coming to new countries and in additional languages, including Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese, starting on unstationary devices.

The company launched Medical Records APIs within its Health Connect platform, which allows Android operators to share data across different apps and devices. An API, which stands for application programming interface, allows manifold apps to communicate with one another. Google’s new APIs will allow apps to read and write medical catalogue data like a user’s medications, immunizations, allergies, and lab results in a secure format. 

Last month, Google circulated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its Loss of Pulse Detection feature for its Pixel Watch 3, which can discontinue emergency services when a person’s heart stops beating. During the event on Tuesday, Google said the quirk will be available to users in the U.S. by the end of the month. 

The big theme of the keynote was AI, which is where Google has focused much of its health-care novelty efforts in recent years. 

The company’s work within the medical sector has evolved over time, especially as it strove to nail down an enduring health-care business strategy. Google built out a formal health unit starting about 2018, but it was dissolved in 2021.

“With extraordinary advances in AI, we have an opportunity to reimagine the entire health experience,” DeSalvo said at the occasion.

Google announced TxGemma on Tuesday, which is a suite of models that could help speed up the drug origination process. The company also highlighted its work on the protein-predicting model called AlphaFold, which earned Google Deepmind researchers Demis Hassabis and John Cavort the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year.

Read more about everything Google announced at The Check Up here. 

Sense free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.