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The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) added Bexar County to the list of counties with a case of measles linked to the West Texas outbreak on Tuesday. This is the first measles infection in Bexar County since 2019, when there were two measles cases.
The case confirmed this week in Bexar County is an isolated infection, according to San Antonio Metropolitan Health District Director Dr. Claude Jacob. It was reported on June 15 and investigated by Metro Health’s epidemiology team, which found no additional public exposure. That was followed by a state investigation, which confirmed a link to the simmering measles outbreak that originated in Gaines County in January.
Metro Health urges everyone to stay up to date on vaccinations and stay alert for potential exposure, Jacob continued in a statement. A community should have a vaccination rate of around 95% to avoid outbreaks of measles, and state records show 94.4% of Bexar County's kindergarteners were vaccinated against measles last year. Several individual school systems in San Antonio have much lower vaccination rates, however. School is not in session, but that suggests some weakness in the city's protection against the highly contagious but vaccine-preventable disease.
DSHS also confirmed measles cases in El Paso and Gaines Counties this week, bringing the total number of infections linked to the outbreak to 753.
Ninety-nine people have been hospitalized. Two otherwise healthy, unvaccinated children have died.
Nationwide, the CDC has confirmed a total of 1,227 measles cases so far this year. There were 285 confirmed cases in all of 2024.
