By Professor John Robertson OBA

From the Guardian today:

An adult who was infected with measles has died in New Mexico, state health officials announced Thursday, though the virus has not been confirmed as the cause of death. The person was from Lea county, just across the state line from the west Texas region where 159 measles cases have been identified and a school-age child died last week – the first US measles death in a decade. New Mexico health officials have not linked the outbreak there to the Texas cases.

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they were sending a team to Texas to help local public health officials respond to the outbreak, which began in late January.

Measles – one of the most infectious diseases in the world – is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to nine out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the CDC. The crisis in Texas comes as the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transitions under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a well-known vaccine skeptic. Kennedy has long promoted the discredited theory linking childhood vaccinations to autism. One of his first actions in office was to postpone a public meeting on immunization.

Kennedy raised alarm among pediatricians, vaccine experts and lawmakers after publishing an opinion piece that focused on vitamin A and nutrition as treatments for measles and did not endorse vaccines. In response to the Texas measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote for Fox News about the benefits of “good nutrition” and vitamin A, but did not explicitly recommend highly effective vaccines.¹

The emerging situation in the USA is not unique in the ‘developed world.’ Measles vaccination in the form of the MMR has fallen in two parts of the UK, England and Northern Ireland. See this:

The World Health Organisation sets the safe ‘herd immunity’ level at 95% and you can see from the above data that neither England and Wales nor Northern Ireland meet this standard at the national level.² Further, within some areas in England, often with higher ethnic minority populations, vaccine denial creates pockets of dangerously low levels of immunity. The situation in Northern Ireland, to my knowledge, has not been researched but may be due to the relatively high level of religious belief there.

Cases of measles, in England and Wales have been climbing in recent years, from 698 in 2020 to 1 619 in 2023³ and then 2 911 in 2024.⁴

Deaths there too, have increased, with 17 in the last 10 years compared to only 8 in the previous 10 years.⁴

In Scotland, though less steeply, cases have increased with 24 cases in 2024, up from only 1 in 2022 with 15 of the 24 ‘imported to Scotland‘.⁵

BBC England has been reporting regularly on measles increases. BBC Northern Ireland too has been reporting that cases are increasing and warning, in the light of the low vaccination levels there, that it is ‘only a matter of time’ before there is a serious outbreak of measles in Northern Ireland.

BBC Scotland has not, to my knowledge, reported on measles statistics for years. It’s a bit like their aversion to reporting English County Lines gangs. Readers will make the connection, I’m sure.

Sources:

1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/measles-death-new-mexico
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/378692/measles-mumps-and-rubella-immunisation-by-country-in-uk/
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-deaths-by-age-group-from-1980-to-2013-ons-data/measles-notifications-and-deaths-in-england-and-wales-1940-to-2013
4. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-epidemiology-2023/confirmed-cases-of-measles-in-england-by-month-age-region-and-upper-tier-local-authority-2024
5. https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/immunisation-and-vaccine-preventable-diseases-quarterly-report/immunisation-and-vaccine-preventable-diseases-quarterly-report-october-to-december-2024-q4/#section-2