The Texas Department of State Health Services is reporting that the outbreak of measles in West Texas is at 90 cases that have been identified since late January.
Sixteen of the patients have been hospitalized.
Five of the cases are vaccinated.
The rest are unvaccinated, or their vaccination status is unknown.
This is one of the worst measles outbreaks in the nation in decades.
Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities.
There are cases in seven different counties, including in higher population areas like in Lubbock and Odessa.
Terri Burke is the executive director of the Texas based Immunization Partnership. She says the state's measles case numbers are "the tip of the iceberg."
Burke said it's likely that the real number of measles cases in in the hundreds.
Sepsis spike in Texas
Since Texas banned abortion, there has been an abundance of evidence that this is leading to additional death and major health risks for pregnant women and infants.
However, much of that evidence is not coming from the state of Texas because investigations into maternal mortality have been put on hold, and the state is not sharing pregnancy death rates in the way it did before the overturning of Roe.
But the nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom ProPublica has obtained that data and is, for the first time, unveiling how bad things are in Texas.
According to ProPublica, dozens more pregnant and postpartum women have died in Texas hospitals since SB8 and the post-Dobbs ban were put in place.
ProPublica also found that the number of women suffering from sepsis shot up more than 50 percent since the abortion bans.
Lizzie Presser is a lead reporter on the ProPublica team that produced Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared.
