Photo and Story By NBC News - Erika Edwards
SEMINOLE, Texas — When Aganetha Unger pulled up her large, white van to the emergency measles testing site, several of her eight children were coughing.
“We had some sickness in the house, not very bad, but some fever, some cough,” said Unger, who is Mennonite. One child, she said, had a fever of 103 degrees.
Her youngest getting tested was a 2-month-old, wrapped tightly in a pink blanket on her mom’s lap. When the EMS team swabbed her nose, she didn’t cry.
It was Thursday, eight days after the Texas Department of State Health Services first reported a measles outbreak on the rural, western edge of the state.
On Tuesday this week, the number of confirmed cases rose to 58, the state health department said. The majority of those cases are in Gaines County, which borders New Mexico. Four of the patients had been vaccinated. The rest are either unvaccinated or their status isn't known.
Most of the infections are in school-age kids, and 13 have been hospitalized.
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world. The latest measles case count likely represents a fraction of the true number of infections. Health officials — who are scrambling to get a handle on the vaccine-preventable outbreak — suspect 200 to 300 people in West Texas are infected but untested, and therefore not part of the state’s official tally so far.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can send in its experts to assist only if the state requests help. So far, Texas has not done so, the CDC said.
The CDC has sent about 2,000 doses of the MMR vaccine to Texas health officials at their request. However, most doses so far are being accepted by partially vaccinated kids to boost their immunity, rather than the unvaccinated.
Without widespread vaccination, experts say, the outbreak could go on for months.
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